"There is a change coming here."
James Brumsfield said that in March, standing near a groundbreaking ceremony a few dozen feet from the custom menswear shop he's run inside Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza for more than twenty-five years. He was talking about the mall. He wasn't talking about home prices. But if you're trying to make sense of what's happening to Baldwin Hills real estate right now, his line is as good a starting point as any.
On March 5, 2026, Mayor Karen Bass, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, and Councilmember Heather Hutt joined developers and community members to break ground on Phase 1 of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza redevelopment. Crews began demolishing the mall's former Sears building that week to clear land for the first 92 of what will eventually be 961 planned homes on the 42-acre site. Dump trucks and excavators have been part of the neighborhood's daily soundtrack ever since, and they will be for a while yet.
Here's the part that should actually interest anyone comparing homes in Baldwin Hills right now. In the three months ending June 2026, the median sale price for the neighborhood's flatland homes rose 18.7% year over year to roughly $1,000,000. Over that same window, the price per square foot fell 1.5%. A market where the median climbs nearly 19% while the per-foot price drops isn't behaving normally. Something underneath the headline number is shifting.
The Number That Doesn't Add Up
A rising median with a falling price per square foot usually means one thing: the mix of what's selling has changed, not just what buyers are willing to pay for the same square footage. More larger homes are trading, or more homes with lower finish-out costs per foot, or both. Either way, the median alone is a poor guide to what any specific house near the mall is actually worth right now, because it's answering a different question than the one a buyer is asking.
Meanwhile, in Baldwin Hills Estates, the hillside enclave of view homes locals call the Dons, the median sale price sat at $1,455,000 as of March 2026, up a comparatively modest 4.9% year over year. That's real appreciation, but it isn't remotely the same curve as the flats. Two sub-markets inside one reported neighborhood, moving at two different speeds, for what appear to be two different reasons.
That split is not a coincidence. It lines up almost exactly with where the Crenshaw Plaza construction is happening, and who is close enough to feel it.
What's Actually Under Construction
It helps to know the scale of what's rising a few blocks from these flatland listings. Phase 1 alone includes:
- 92 new homes along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Santa Rosalia Drive, part of a larger block where Harridge Development Group has approval for 290 total units, 10% of them reserved for households earning between 60% and 80% of the area median income
- Architecture by Danielian Associates, with Border serving as landscape architect
- A separate 636-unit apartment complex planned for the mall's northern edge at Crenshaw Boulevard and 39th Street
- At full buildout: 961 residential units, a 400-room hotel, an office tower, 330,000 square feet of retail, and nearly 150,000 square feet of office space, adding up to a 3-million-square-foot project
The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza Partnership, led by managing director Jason Lombard, is coordinating the work with the city. Harridge, which bought the property roughly five years ago, is developing alongside Access Industries, SilverPeak, and Atlas Development Group. Bass has pointed to an adaptive reuse executive directive she signed as the thing that let a project like this move through entitlements faster than it otherwise would have. City officials have described the public investment at roughly $90 million.
None of that is finished soon. The 92 homes in this first phase are expected to be complete no later than 2029. The full redevelopment, hotel and office tower included, is projected to take five to seven years from the March 2026 groundbreaking, putting a realistic completion somewhere between 2031 and 2033.
Why the Flats Are Moving Faster Than the Hills
Here's the mechanism worth understanding before you read too much into either number. Flatland buyers close to the mall are pricing in a future that doesn't exist yet: new retail, a hotel, walkable density, and years of active construction between now and then. Some of that future is already showing up in faster sales, per the three-month window ending June 2026, when flatland homes sold in a median 49 days compared to 69 days the year before.
Buyers in the Estates aren't weighing the same trade. Those homes sell on view, privacy, and the panoramic sightlines toward downtown and the San Gabriel Mountains that the hillside streets are known for, not on what gets built at the base of the hill. A multi-year construction project doesn't add value to a Dons-street listing the way it might to a flatland one, and it may not detract from it much either, since the two markets are answering to different buyers with different priorities.
That's the real story behind the 18.7% median jump. It isn't that every home in Baldwin Hills got more valuable at the same rate. It's that a specific kind of buyer, betting on a specific and well-documented redevelopment, is willing to pay a premium for proximity to something that's still years from finished. Natalie Powell of the Crenshaw Manor Community Association has attended nearly every planning meeting on this project and calls the progress something the community has been waiting years to see. Windsor Hills resident Sherry Bailey framed the appeal in plainer terms: a chance at "good stores, good housing" in a part of the city that hasn't seen major new investment in a long time. That kind of sentiment, multiplied across enough flatland buyers, is exactly the sort of demand that can move a median without moving the per-foot value of what's actually being purchased.
What This Means If You're Buying or Selling Right Now
If you're selling a flatland home near the plaza, the current appreciation and faster days on market are real, but they're tied to a story that buyers are pricing in advance of delivery. That can work in your favor now. It also means your comparable set should weight the last two to three quarters heavily rather than reaching back further, since the market's behavior has shifted with the groundbreaking itself.
If you're selling in the Estates, don't expect the flatland numbers to apply to your listing. Your buyer pool is drawn by view and privacy, not by proximity to future retail, and your pricing strategy should reflect that rather than borrowing momentum from a different part of the neighborhood.
If you're buying, the question worth asking isn't "what's the Baldwin Hills median" but "which Baldwin Hills am I actually buying into." A flatland purchase now is a bet on a multi-year construction timeline delivering the amenity value the market is already pricing in. An Estates purchase is a bet on the same fundamentals that have always driven that pocket: view, quiet, and the kind of privacy a construction zone can't offer, whatever eventually gets built at the bottom of the hill.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long will construction disruption near the mall actually last? Site work and demolition began in March 2026 and are expected to continue for two to three years just for this phase. The full multi-phase buildout, including the hotel and office tower, is projected to take five to seven years total.
Are all 961 planned homes going to be for sale, or is this mostly rental housing? The plan includes a mix of apartments and condominiums, plus the 290 approved units on the first block, 10% of which are reserved for households earning between 60% and 80% of area median income. Buyers interested in ownership opportunities within the project itself should confirm unit-by-unit availability as later phases come to market, since terms can change between now and completion.
Does being close to the redevelopment site guarantee my home will be worth more later? No. Proximity has clearly influenced flatland pricing and speed of sale already, but a project this size carries construction timelines, financing conditions, and market cycles that can shift over five to seven years. Treat current flatland appreciation as a data point about buyer sentiment today, not a promise about resale value at project completion.
Baldwin Hills is not one market right now. It's at least two, moving at different speeds for different reasons, and the headline median won't tell you which one you're actually buying into. If you want that read before you write an offer, ACME Real Estate works this neighborhood block by block, not just by the numbers that make it into a listing sheet.
