Mar Vista Real Estate
Stable assets are a must for a balanced portfolio. Investors flock to real estate for long-term, secure assets that can weather economic uncertainty.
While real estate is well known for its long-term hallmarks, getting into an impressive market before it takes off can net substantial returns and stability.
Investing in the right neighborhood at the right time can transform your portfolio. High-potential, niche neighborhoods, like Mar Vista in Los Angeles, are the perfect place to find real estate that excels across metrics.
Choose Mar Vista
Los Angeles is home to hundreds of distinctive, niche real estate markets. Small, high-performance neighborhoods are easy to miss with such a vast market.
Our investment strategy at Christina hinges on seizing the perfect moment to invest in LA’s overlooked markets. Mar Vista is one such market.
Mar Vista is primed for an explosive performance. Here’s why you should seriously consider investing in this niche neighborhood.
Where Is Mar Vista?
Mar Vista is located in the Westside region of Los Angeles. The Westside region is well-known for its hyper-competitive real estate markets.
The region is packed with some of the most high-value real estate in the entire world. Neighborhoods renowned for glitz and glamor, like Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Brentwood, and Holmby Hills, are located on the Westside.
At the center of the Westside is Mar Vista. It borders Santa Monica to the east, West Los Angeles to the south, Culver City to the west, and Playa Vista to the south.
Technically an incorporated city, Mar Vista is a modestly sized neighborhood by Los Angeles standards at 2.9 sq miles. With Venice Blvd passing above its southern borders, the 10 to its north, and the 405 to its east, Mar Vista is surrounded by prominent Los Angeles arterial highways.
Key Statistics of Mar Vista
Understanding the pertinent statistics of a neighborhood is the best way to assess its potential for future investment. You can glean insights about Mar Vista’s character through statistical information about its residents, community, and real estate market.
Here are some vital stats on Mar Vista that establish the market’s developing future:
Population
Mar Vista is home to 58,851 residents, almost evenly split between men and women. The year-over-year change in the population is down slightly, by -0.5 percent, and the median age for Mar Vista residents is 38.3. That’s on the older side compared to the rest of the city.
86 percent of people lived in the same house as the previous year. Of the remaining 14 percent, most new Mar Vista residents were from Los Angeles already.
Still, Mar Vista’s resident pool saw its most significant increase in Californians from outside the county moving to the neighborhood, an increase of 3.4 percent compared to the year before.
With an increase in Californians moving to Mar Vista, demand for housing can make the market more competitive and lucrative.
Income
The average household income for Mar Vista is $124,575 a year, and it’s only increasing. The year-over-year change in average household income has gone up by almost 6 percent.
The median household income in the neighborhood is on the rise as well. Mar Vista’s median household income is $87,589 a year, with a 4.4 percent increase compared to the past year.
People under 25 make the least populous age demographic, with a median income of about $55,000 annually. The wealthiest age bracket is 25 to 44-year-olds, whose median household income is about $98,000, followed by 45 to 64-year-olds and over 65-year-olds.
Mar Vista is getting wealthier. Young people do quite well in Mar Vista — middle-aged people do even better. This influx of wealth bodes well for the Mar Vista real estate market, as higher incomes circulate more capital in the neighborhood, which may raise real estate prices.
Employment
The vast majority of Mar Vista residents, 92 percent, are white-collar workers. The remaining 8 percent of folks do blue-collar work.
Of the 31,000 white-collar Mar Vista residents, 66 percent work in the private sector. 16 percent are self-employed entrepreneurs, 11 percent work for the government, and 7 percent work for non-profits.
The majority of white-collar workers in the private sector means a strong, high-income earning demographic is established in the area.
The increasing white-collar demographic indicates more high-income earning residents are moving to the neighborhood and raising Mar Vista property values.
Housing
Mar Vista has 28,135 units of housing. The majority of those units, 64 percent, are rented, while the homeowners occupy the remaining 36 percent.
With more rental units than owner-occupied ones, Mar Vista has a competitive rental market, making it an ideal neighborhood to invest in a rental property.
Most of the housing in Mar Vista was built in the 1950s when over 5,500 units were added to the market. In the 1970s, development decreased precipitously.
However, growth has increased significantly compared to recent years. Over 2,500 housing units were constructed in the 2010s, a 50 percent increase from the 1,400 built in the 2000s.
Development is on the rise in Mar Vista. Construction in the area is a vote of confidence for the neighborhood’s real estate market and indicates that Mar Vista is primed for investors.
Why Is Mar Vista on the Rise?
Statistics indicate a promising shift developing in the Mar Vista real estate market. Understanding the potential and longevity of an improving real estate market in the neighborhood is a matter of understanding the causes behind the shift.
Here are a few reasons why Mar Vista may be on the rise:
- It’s in a great location.
- It’s located near Silicon Beach.
- There’s plenty to do.
What’s Great About Mar Vista’s Location?
Mar Vista is centrally located within the Westside. It has excellent access to the area’s attractions while retaining relative seclusion compared to its more popular, highly trafficked neighborhoods.
Just bordering Santa Monica to the east, it’s just under four miles to the beach. Residents can enjoy the waterfront locations without the exorbitant waterfront prices. Furthermore, coastal neighborhoods like Venice and Santa Monica have a lively atmosphere with plenty to do.
Mar Vista’s proximity to arterial highways like Venice Boulevard, the 10, and the 405 helps residents immediately interface with the city’s transit infrastructure.
Mar Vista is at the center of one of the best areas of Los Angeles, with solid accessibility to the rest of the city. Its ideal location alone is enough to make this neighborhood a market powerhouse.
What’s Silicon Beach?
Los Angeles has been an economic force since the 20th century. Recent developments have taken the city’s economic prowess to new heights. For example, the Silicon Beach phenomenon in the Westside is transforming Los Angeles.
Silicon Beach takes its name from the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley in northern California, a tech hub virtually peerless until recently. In the early 2010s, Google built its largest campus outside the Bay Area in Santa Monica.
The presence of this tech giant began a dramatic shift for Santa Monica and the Westside region: hundreds of tech companies followed in Google’s wake. They established headquarters in these beachside neighborhoods, coining the name Silicon Beach.
How Is Silicon Beach Affecting Mar Vista?
Silicon Beach has exploded outside of its point of origin in Santa Monica. Neighboring Venice, Playa Del Rey, Culver City, and Mar Vista have experienced the effects of an increased tech presence.
The presence of mega-cap tech companies in neighborhoods transforms the local economy, particularly the real estate market.
Blue chip tech giants to venture capital-backed startups have massive budgets to rent office space; their high-income earning employees have the resources to afford high-value living spaces.
As the tech presence increases, competition for premium real estate also increases. Mar Vista is quickly becoming a bona fide Silicon Beach neighborhood. Property values and rental income in the area for residential and commercial real estate are primed to explode.
What Is There to Do in Mar Vista?
Mar Vista’s proximity to popular Westside neighborhoods makes it easy to overlook its own attractions. There’s plenty to do in Mar Vista, a distinctive allure that draws in new residents.
The restaurant and nightlife scene in Mar Vista has ramped up significantly over the past decade; a diverse selection of cuisine, from Mexican and Thai to French, has distinguished Mar Vista’s eating.
The Mar Vista Recreation Center allows residents to enjoy the sunny Los Angeles climate with outdoor amenities.
Mar Vista is also a family-friendly location, boasting over a half dozen schools within its small borders. This quiet neighborhood is the perfect balance between bustle and tranquility.
How To Invest in Mar Vista Real Estate?
- Rental Properties
- House Flipping
- Invest With a Firm
Rental Properties
Property rental is the most common way investors earn an income from real estate. Mar Vista is an attractive market for rental property opportunities. Most residents rent, indicating that the rental market is strong in Mar Vista.
With development on the rise in the neighborhood, the market appears to anticipate increased migration to Mar Vista. Rental properties are high cash flow assets that yield a substantial return when they perform as planned.
While most investors acquire residential rental properties, commercial properties can also be an effective asset. Mar Vista is saturated with both.
Rental properties are a time-consuming and expensive enterprise. Screening tenants, managing the property, making repairs, and (in a worst-case scenario) evicting tenants can be burdensome processes that demand your constant attention.
Renting out property can almost become a second job.
House Flipping
House flipping has become an effective way to get short-term gains on real estate. To flip houses, investors acquire a property — generally an undervalued fixer-upper — make repairs to the property to raise its value, then sell the property for a profit.
Flipping houses is a particularly effective strategy in up-and-coming neighborhoods. Acquiring a property before the market takes off presents the best opportunity to maximize a return.
Combined with the increased value from repairs, investors can profit substantially by flipping the right property at the right time.
Mar Vista has seen a significant increase in development in the past decade, indicating a strong interest in properties in the area.
The majority of properties are from the 1950s and the 1970s. Acquiring older Mar Vista homes and updating them to flip as the market grows stronger could pay dividends for brave investors.
When house flipping goes as planned, it can profit investors substantially. But there is a lot that can go wrong when flipping houses. Properties may be more work than an individual investor can manage: mold, structural damage, and other expensive repairs can quickly turn a potential profit into a sinking loss.
If the market takes a turn for the worse, investors are stuck with an asset that hinders their finances more than it helps.
Invest With a Firm
Breaking into the real estate market on your own is extremely difficult. Real estate, especially the premium assets in Westside LA, can have high financial thresholds.
Things like down payments, mortgages, and property maintenance require investors to have substantial reserves on hand to invest in the first place.
Firms give investors access to assets they couldn’t acquire on their own. The pooled capital firms have on hand makes investing in rock-solid, hyper-valuable assets possible. Investing with a firm ensures that your money is used in the most effective way possible.
Mar Vista properties are already high value, with a strong likelihood that they will appreciate in the future. Consulting a firm could connect you with the most lucrative property in Mar Vista before it takes off.
Invest With the Best
Over four decades, Christina has thrived in the Los Angeles real estate market. Our team has the knowledge, skill set, resources, and network to connect you with premium assets that can help transform your portfolio.
Get started today. Acquire the Mar Vista property that can help secure your finances for the future.
Sources:
Neighborhoods Spotlight: Mar Vista | L.A. Times