Real Estate newsletter: Super Bowl shakes up Inglewood
Welcome back to the Real Estate newsletter, and happy Super Bowl weekend. If you’re watching the game from home, I hope your wings are fresh and your beer is cold. If you’re heading down to SoFi Stadium, I hope you find a place to park for less than $1,000.
When the Bengals and Rams clash on Sunday, about 100,000 fans will cram into SoFi — nearly the population of Inglewood, the city that surrounds it. There are natural consequences to dropping a $5-billion stadium in the middle of a relatively small city, and The Times spent the week exploring them.
First off, the parking situation is reaching newfound levels of chaos. For a few hours on Sunday, homeowners and small businesses with driveways and parking lots will have some of the most valuable real estate in Southern California, and some are reselling spots for a fortune. One spot about a mile from the stadium was listed on StubHub for $4,850.
Another consequence of a huge development in a small city is higher home and rent prices. We took a look at what Inglewood real estate prices have been doing since the stadium was announced in 2016 and found that home prices increased roughly 84% and rents have shot up 59%. As always, a changing city is great for some but brutal for others.
We also looked into a controversial home-ownership model called tenancy-in-common, in which residents share ownership of a property. It makes houses more affordable in otherwise pricy areas, but it has multiple downsides, as investors often displace tenants in order to renovate their units.
This week’s batch of celebrity listings explore the best of two eras: the 1980s and 2020s. The 1980s entry comes via Joe Pesci, who sold his Art Deco-style mansion in New Jersey for $5 million. The curvy, cream-colored house would make a great home for any of Pesci’s gangster characters.
The 2020s home belongs to Dr. Joseph Englanoff, who’s asking $139 million for a mega-mansion chock-full of amenities. The list goes on and on, but one highlight is the vodka-tasting room, which is kept at sub-zero temperatures and comes with furs to keep guests warm.
While catching up on the latest, visit and like our Facebook page, where you can find real estate stories and updates throughout the week.
Super Bowl parking prices soar
On an average Sunday, parking at the Midas auto repair shop in Inglewood is free. On Super Bowl Sunday, it could cost as much as $1,500.
Attendance will be at an all-time high when the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals clash at SoFi Stadium, which typically seats around 70,000 but can expand to as many as 100,000 for big events. But thanks to stages and event spaces occupying some of the lots surrounding the stadium, parking there will be extremely scarce.
That is forcing football fans to find alternative places to park. For a few hours Sunday, Inglewood businesses and residents with driveways and garages suddenly find themselves with some of the most valuable real estate in the city — and they’re looking to cash in.
More than 100 spots are up for grabs on the ticket exchange site StubHub, and they range wildly in price. A spot in the Civic Center parking garage costs $135, while the asking price for a spot in a small parking lot about a mile from the stadium is $4,850.
SoFi Stadium brings both football and higher home prices
Inglewood’s home and rent prices have skyrocketed since the NFL approved plans for the Rams to relocate to Inglewood in 2016, outpacing those in surrounding communities and Los Angeles County.
The price increases, which also have been propelled by recent development beyond SoFi Stadium in the city of nearly 108,000 residents, is a boon for home sellers, developers and landlords. But more expensive houses and apartments mean Inglewood is less affordable, pricing out longtime Black and Latino residents.
In 2016, Inglewood was one of the most affordable places to buy a home in Los Angeles County. Out of 159 communities in the county where real estate firm Zillow tracks prices, Inglewood and its median home sale price of $402,271 ranked 124th.
As of last year, it had leapfrogged 27 neighborhoods to the 97th spot with a median price of $739,254 — an increase of nearly 84%.
TIC units with a twist
A new housing model that landed in Los Angeles several years ago made home ownership more affordable in pricy neighborhoods, a welcome option in a housing-starved region, Andrew Khouri writes.
It also had a major flaw, according to critics: Investors often displaced tenants in cheaper rentals to renovate their units and resell them.
Now, an L.A. developer has a new approach to the so-called tenancy-in-common, or TIC, model, in which residents share ownership of the property. Instead of converting old, rent-controlled buildings into TIC properties, the developer is replacing single-family homes with new town homes.
That adds less-costly housing stock to the area with fewer chances of displacement since most single-family houses are owner-occupied.
Pesci’s mansion is fit for a gangster
On the coast of New Jersey, an Art Deco-style mansion that screams Joe Pesci has been sold by the man himself for $5 million.
The Oscar-winning actor, who grew up in the Garden State, bought the property in 1994 for $850,000. He’d been shopping it around for the last three years for $6.5 million before finally finding a buyer. The sale closed Wednesday.
A mishmash of the over-the-top style of the 1980s and ’90s, the waterfront estate spans a third of an acre in Lavallette overlooking Barnegat Bay. Dramatically different than its neighbors, the mansion looks like a natural fit for one of Pesci’s gangster characters in films such as “Goodfellas,” “Casino” or “The Irishman.”
Mega-mansion comes with all the bells and whistles
In 2014, a doctor and real estate investor named Joseph Englanoff paid $5 million for an empty plot of land in the hills of Bel-Air. He spent the next seven years crafting an amenity-loaded mega-mansion on the property, and the home has finally surfaced for sale at $139 million.
If he gets his price, it will be Bel-Air’s second-priciest home sale ever. The record was set in 2019 when Lachlan Murdoch paid $150 million for the famed “Beverly Hillbillies” mansion.
The $139-million tag also makes it the third-priciest home currently on the market in L.A. County. Coincidentally, the top spot belongs to The One, another Bel-Air mega-mansion listed for $295 million that’s set to be auctioned off due to foreclosure if it can’t find a buyer soon. Englanoff is a lender on that property, and he’s owed about $36 million.
Although most Bel-Air mansions come with a laundry list of amenities, Englanoff’s creation, called La Fin, brings new meaning to the word.
What we’re reading
Goodbye, Zillow. Hello, Zillow 2.0. As part of the “2.0” branding, the real estate firm is developing a “housing super app” that connects all the pieces of the moving process under one digital experience. Investors seem happy; after Zillow revealed the plan, its shares went up more than 12%. GeekWire has the details.
Tired: converting a garage into an ADU. Wired: converting a carnival wagon into a home. NY Post talked to a couple who transformed a yellow-and-red circus wagon into a chic mobile home complete with an antique sink and a toilet that looks like a golden throne.
