6311 Hazeltine Ave, Van Nuys

the successful closing of 6311 Hazeltine Ave, a duplex in Van Nuys that sold for its land value.

This listing had an enormous amount of interest resulting in many offers, but it also came with its fair share of challenges. Most notably, the property had a large 12' highway dedication running down both Hazeltine Ave and Sylvan St, which effectively eliminated 2,500 square feet of land. On top of that, recent modifications to city regulations governing vehicle ingress and egress onto major streets like Hazeltine Avenue imposed additional constraints on what could be built. In other words, the city requires that there be enough room within the property's limits for a car to do a 3-point turn. They don't want cars backing out onto busy streets like Hazeltine. This effectively increased the setback another 3 feet on all sides for a total of a 15 foot setback. These two issues combines resulted in a loss of over 3,500 square feet of usable land which is about 33% of the total lot size! This doesn't change the mathematically permitted amount of units that you can build, but in a practical sense, it makes a big difference on how many units you can fit into the usable land and height requirements.

In the first few weeks on market, we received many dozens of calls from developers and brokers, and we were tasked with explaining these challenges with the site over and over again. The winning buyer was ultimately chosen due to his strong resume of building many other projects throughout the San Fernando Valley. In fact, this buyer built the new construction property that you can see in the main picture above, just 2 doors down. Even though the price was below our list price, the sellers understood the challenges of the site and wanted to go with a buyer they felt knew how to handle the complexities of this lot, giving them the highest chance of a successful escrow.