Koreatown has found its way back onto the institutional radar, and this time, it is may be there for good. Four years ago, TruAmerica Multifamily purchased the Vermont in Koreatown for an astounding $283 million, putting the Downtown Los Angeles-adjacent market on the map. Then, with little institutional quality product available in the market, things settled down. Now, Century West Partners has sold its class-A, luxury K2LA project for approximately $200 million. The three-building development sold to two separate institutional buyers in the second largest transaction in the submarket.

“The Vermont put Koreatown on the map for institutional investors, and this is the second largest transaction since then,” Moran & Company's Derrek Ostrzyzek, who brokered the deal, tells GlobeSt.com. “When the Vermont sold, institutional investors were still hesitant. At the time, the question really was, 'How deep is the market for class-A luxury units at those rents?' Now we have a pipeline ahead of us. This is the first deal that is going to open up the floodgates to more activity there. This is a catalyst trade.”

On this deal, Ostrzyzek saw tremendous interest from institutional buyers from across the country. “Every institutional shop came out,” he says. “This wasn't value-add or opportunistic investors that were looking at this deal; these were large core funds and institutional separate account clients that were now comfortable with Koreatown and understood its position within the market.”