A reinvigorated opposition campaign to Measure ULA is gathering steam and signatures, but cold hard proof of just how much of an impact the measure is having on the multifamily development landscape is elusive.
Potential investors are interested in new projects in Southern California more broadly but hesitate when it comes to Los Angeles, according to LaTerra Development managing partner Chris Tourtellotte.
Cranes and construction aren’t as common a sight in Los Angeles as they were three or four years ago.
Still, with the nationwide multifamily market in a moment of upheaval, it’s difficult to pin the blame for decreased development on ULA, the real estate transfer tax on almost all transactions above $5M.
“They’re very much bullish on LA County, but not so much on the city of LA, and it’s a complex set of reasons,” CBRE First Vice President Kamran Paydar said. “ULA is a piece of it. Interest rates, which have risen, are also a big component, then add to that the different housing policies that are being supported by different municipalities.”
There is an active campaign to collect signatures to get a proposition to repeal the measure added to the November 2026 ballot.
Measure ULA has taken the blame for the falling investment in Los Angeles’ multifamily landscape. A 2025 study found commercial transactions dropped between 30% and 50% in the two years following Measure ULA going into effect.
A 2025 University of California, Los Angeles report, written in part by an academic who has helped inform other cities’ real estate transfer taxes, estimated that about 1,900 units per year went unbuilt in Los Angeles since the measure’s adoption.
These data points and others are held up by those seeking to put the repeal of ULA on the November ballot.
Los Angeles’ number of permitted residential units have slumped, but so have those of other cities nearby.
In 2022, Los Angeles permitted a total of 23,422 residential units that count toward the state requirements for housing — 5.1% of its goal set by the state. In 2024, the city permitted 17,195 residential units, or 3.8% of its state goal for the period of 2021-2029.
The state goals lay out the number and affordability levels of new homes a city or municipality must plan for in an attempt to ensure adequate housing is added across California. The target number considers current and anticipated future needs, including job growth, population growth and homelessness.
Other cities, even those that are more favorably viewed by the development community, saw their numbers drop over the last three or so years as interest rates rose. In 2022, Burbank permitted a total of 840 units, or 9.6% of its state goal. By 2024, that number had slumped to 363 units, or 4.1% of the target. Culver City permitted a total of 93 units in 2022, 2.8% of its state goal. In 2024, it permitted 87 units, or 2.6% of its state goal.
Construction across these cities is down, and it’s hard to say how much of that is due to Measure ULA or other factors, such as the cost of borrowing and policies for multifamily construction in other cities. Nationally, a 27% year-over-year drop in new deliveries was chalked up to high construction costs.
Some developers say their investors are interested in Southern California, just not in Los Angeles proper, and some adjacent areas with friendlier policies are getting extra attention because despite LA’s need for additional housing units, developers don’t want to build there anymore.
Burbank, where LaTerra has two in-progress projects, and Orange County are of interest to investors, Tourtellotte said. Orange County is perceived as having less regulatory risk than Greater LA, he said, while Burbank has more jobs than it does households, signaling there’s room to add residential units.
Investors, builders and equity capital providers are interested in finding opportunities in LA County, Paydar said.
Paydar pointed to Culver City, which used a recent housing element update to make housing production possible in new parts of the city. Developers responded by proposing thousands of units in the city, including a large project with more than 1,000 units that was approved this month by the planning commission.
Courtesy of Real Estate Development Associates
A project slated for Fox Hills in Culver City, which redid its housing element to allow for more dense housing in new parts of the city
Culver City does have a transfer tax, but it exempts the first transfer of new multifamily buildings.
Measure ULA is a critical part of the decision-making process, but as for where developers and their investors ultimately go, “there are a lot of layers as to what is steering attention and capital,” Paydar said.
Burbank was generally viewed favorably by investors and developers who might have written off Los Angeles, but after a decision to move ahead with a so-called soft rent cap earlier this month, some are moving on from there as well.
On a Burbank site that CBRE First Vice President Kadie Presley Wilson and Paydar were marketing, a potential buyer balked after hearing about Burbank’s rent cap decision.
“Even though it wouldn’t necessarily affect our new construction development, they just felt like it didn’t bode well for future rent growth,” Presley Wilson said.
Many of the developer clients that were historically who Presley Wilson said she might go to with Los Angeles opportunities are not just looking within LA County, they’re also looking to Ventura County and San Diego.
“Because they see, I think, more opportunity with less restriction,” she said.
There are some developers that are still choosing Los Angeles for their ground-up developments. At CityPads, the firm is building in LA in part because it has a “mostly predictable” entitlement and permitting path, CityPads CEO Sandy Albert said. His company has a handful of projects in West LA, just next to Culver City, in the works.
CityPads has baked Measure ULA into their underwriting, he said.
“We’re getting to a high enough yield thus far to attract investment capital,” Albert said. But when Measure ULA goes away — “which we hope and believe at some point it will,” he said — that will just create an added bonus for Albert and CityPads investors.