VENICE, CA-GlobeSt.com has learned exclusively that a private California-based seller has listed a four-property portfolio in Venice Beach for an asking price of $25 million. The listing represents the recent increase of transactional activity in this burgeoning L.A. submarket.

The portfolio includes three mixed-use properties and one 19,000-square-foot parking/open-air retail lot for potential development. The properties are all located along the Venice Beach boardwalk and include 511 Ocean Front Walk, a three-story apartment building with ground-floor retail; 517 Ocean Front Walk, a two-parcel complex known as the Gingerbread Court, consisting of seven buildings containing ground-floor retail and second-floor office space; 523 Ocean Front Walk, also known as the Blu House, a beach bungalow with coastal and city permits for a variety of uses including residential, restaurant and retail; and 601 Ocean Front Walk, a commercially zoned vacant parcel totaling approximately 19,800 square feet, with current coastal entitlements in place for a mixed-use food court/retail building. The latter property is currently being used as a parking lot with open-air retail on the boardwalk.

Richard Ringer, a first VP investments in Marcus & Millichap’s West Los Angeles office, is representing the seller. “This is a rare opportunity to acquire over 300 feet of irreplaceable beachfront real estate with unobstructed views of the Pacific Ocean along Ocean Front Walk,” said Ringer in a prepared statement. “This unique offering in the heart of Silicon Beach will attract interest from a variety of local and foreign investors and from potential owner-users in the high-tech and entertainment industries.”

Ringer tells GlobeSt.com that the Venice submarket is “perhaps the strongest market in all of Los Angeles. It’s a very hot market for all property types.”

He adds that while Venice has always been popular amongst tourists, it has also historically had some rougher areas. Yet, with the area now known as Silicon Beach attracting Google and other entertainment and tech companies and the adaptive reuse project for the Venice post office underway, the submarket has received a tremendous boost. “Obviously, this means there are more disposable-income-producing renters going out to eat and shopping at the shops. Main Street—parts of which are Venice and parts of which are Santa Monica—is some very sexy retail. You’re getting better rents in Ocean Park than in North of Wilshire, which used to be the most-requested region in the area.”

As GlobeSt.com previously reported, in October Aimco closed financing to fund redevelopment for Lincoln Place, a 35-acre property here. The redevelopment is being funded by a $190.7-million FHA-insured loan from lender and servicer Red Mortgage Capital LLC and represents the largest FHA Section 221(d)(4) unsubsidized loan ever insured by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Also in October, as GlobeSt.com previously reported, an Archstone-sponsored partnership purchased the Frank, a LEED-Platinum certified 70-unit apartment community here and is renaming it Archstone Venice on Rose. Gerding Edlen was the seller, and the purchase price, $56,762,000—$810,886 per unit or $605 per square foot—represents one of the highest prices per unit ever achieved for a class-A multifamily asset in Los Angeles County.

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Carrie Rossenfeld

Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.