North Hollywood Land Just Traded at $89/SF
Yes, it was a church. Yes, it was an owner-user. It's still $89/SF for the land.
At a glance
closed June 16, 2026
no bid-ask delta recorded
21,689 SF building
1.99 acres · 5 APNs
implied land basis
RSO applicable
mixed residential overlay
surface lot
not an investment sale
What matters
- The Land is the story. Some investors will dismiss this as an owner-user purchase. That's fair. But it still establishes a real transaction where nearly 2 acres traded at $89/SF.
- Owner-Users Are Becoming the Market.Investment sales remain slow, but owner-users are still buying. They're not waiting for lower interest rates, they're securing locations they may never have another chance to own.
- 149 Parking Spaces May Be the Hidden Asset. I keep looking at the 149 parking spaces. That opens the door for future users like schools, nonprofits, medical facilities, or other owner-users that need large parking fields.
- The Freeway Is the Discount.Yes, the freeway likely affected pricing. But someone still paid $7.75 million for nearly 86k SF because opportunities like this don't come around often.
What an Operator Sees
What caught my attention is that this wasn't an isolated transaction.
Just three days later, the same broker, David Knowlton of NAI Capital, sold another large church campus at 14001 Burbank Blvd. in Van Nuys. It was also an owner-user transaction on roughly 2 acres with more than 135 parking spaces.
I reached out to David to learn who the buyers are and whether these two transactions are related. If he shares additional insight, I'll update this article.
This property sits in the Studio City/Universal corridor, just minutes from Universal Studios and the North Hollywood Arts District. New townhomes nearby have been selling for around $500/SF, making this a site with long-term redevelopment potential.
7-1-2026
I found out after publishing that the buyer was Chabad, which makes the deal make a lot more sense. This wasn't an investor chasing a cap rate—it was an owner-user buying a long-term campus.
Nearly two acres with 149 parking spaces in the Studio City/Universal corridor is almost impossible to recreate today. When you look at it that way, the pricing becomes much easier to understand.
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I research these transactions to sharpen my own investment strategy and share what I find so Los Angeles owners, brokers and investors can debate the market with better information.
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Property and transaction data: CoStar Research.
Write to David Safai at David@AtlasBrief.La
Appeared in the Sept. 6, 2026 edition of The Tape.