A pedestrian walks past a Venice townhouse complex. As more techies move into the area, locals fear it could lose its eclectic, funky vibe. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
LOS ANGELES – In Venice Beach, 25-year-old Snapchat co-founder Bobby Murphy has bought a new two-bedroom house for $2.1 million, or nearly double the median price of homes in the neighborhood.
A few blocks away, a three-bedroom town house with a rooftop sun deck was just rented for $7,000 a month – a year ago, an identical unit was renting for $5,900. “Totally Silicon Beach living,” the ad on Craigslist proclaimed.
And farther south in Marina del Rey, hundreds of apartments were recently completed and aimed at drawing the tech crowd, with high-speed Internet in every unit, free Wi-Fi in common areas and an online application process.
Los Angeles’ Westside area has long been a desirable place to live, attracting entertainment executives, sports stars and financial gurus. But there’s a new guard moving in.
The burgeoning tech community known as Silicon Beach is fueling a Westside housing grab that has enabled landlords to push sky-high rents even higher and helped send home prices above their pre-recession highs. Real-estate agents say that within these neighborhoods, techies have made a brutal real-estate market for buyers even tougher.
“Everyone wants to buy here because this is the hot, cool space,” said Brian Maser, a real-estate agent who specializes in selling condos in the area.
Amid last decade’s housing bubble, the median home price in Silicon Beach – the area west of the 405 Freeway from Santa Monica south to Marina del Rey – peaked at $925,000 in the second quarter of 2007 before plummeting 25 percent to $694,000 in the first three months of 2010, according to research firm DataQuick.
But Silicon Beach prices have risen sharply this year. The median price in that area reached $952,500 last quarter, 19.2 percent higher than in the same period last year.
Overall housing prices in Southern California, meanwhile, are still far below their peak during the bubble.
A jogger runs past a four-unit Venice condominium where Bobby Murphy, co-founder of Snapchat Inc., lives. There are fears the area could lose its charmingly quirky atmosphere. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
Tami Pardee, principal of Pardee Properties in Venice, said tech workers from Silicon Beach have descended upon the Venice market, and her agents have been busy showing homes to employees of Google and Facebook. She estimated that 30 percent of her buyers work in the industry.
“They have the money to buy,” she said. “We’re excited but cautious.”
As more techies move into the Westside, there are fears that the area – and especially the eclectic, funky vibe in Venice – could go from charmingly quirky to overly techie.
In a recent report, commercial real-estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap found signs that renters “are beginning to balk at the area’s high rents,” which may be forcing some people to other regions.
“We want Venice to remain Venice,” longtime Westside resident Briana Chalais, 35, said. “We don’t want to be overtaken by all tech people.”
These days, the tech influx can be seen up and down the Westside.
Two years ago, Google expanded its Southern California presence by opening a campus in Venice, leasing 100,000 square feet in three buildings for hundreds of employees. Other tech behemoths, including Facebook, also have sizable operations nearby; in September, Microsoft opened a roughly 20,000-square-foot space in Playa Vista to house 130 employees who had previously been in downtown L.A.
At the same time, smaller tech firms, attracted by the proximity to the beach and the comfortable distance away from cutthroat Silicon Valley, settled in along the Westside. Startup accelerator programs and incubators followed, and the surge in entrepreneurial activity attracted interest from investors, who opened local offices.
As the tech community swelled in number, many zeroed in on nearby housing.
Alex Cochran manages the L.A. office for Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley software firm that helps companies and governments analyze data. When the company outgrew its downtown L.A. office, it left behind the corporate US Bank Tower and set up shop this spring near Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade.
Cochran and his wife then focused their home search nearby. There was an added incentive: Palantir offers its employees a housing subsidy of a few hundred dollars a month to live near the office.
This summer the couple purchased a two-bedroom Santa Monica condo for $749,000.
“I can work remotely, pop in at the office, run home and not have to trek across town,” said Cochran, 31. “It incentivizes community. Your co-workers aren’t just co-workers but also neighbors.”
This month Snapchat’s Murphy, who in recent weeks turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook for his popular photo-messaging app, purchased the $2.1 million Venice home that is blocks from the startup’s headquarters.
The tech effect on Westside housing prices isn’t nearly as pronounced as it is in San Francisco, which has been inundated in recent years by droves of young, affluent techies working for Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and other hot companies.