Youtuber Reveals Why $400,000 Starter Homes Never Went On Sale in Perla Development in DTLA

A new investigation into Perla on Broadway, the first high-rise built in downtown Los Angeles' historic Theatre District in a century, found that housing marketed as starter condos has instead become a financial asset sitting largely unused.

Independent journalist Yoonj Kim pulled deeds, assessor records, and listing histories for the 450-unit tower. Five years after opening, developer Broadway Elite LLC - the local arm of Shanghai Construction Group - still held 253 units. Of those, 218 had never been listed for sale or rent. In June 2022, the company pledged 299 unsold condos to Shanghai Commercial Bank as collateral on a credit line of up to $100 million. The recorded deed gives the bank the rents and HOA votes in the event of default.

The project was pitched in 2017 as homes for first-time buyers starting around $400,000. Kim reported the median sale price instead reached about $702,000. After early sales, the developer did not cut prices. Sales largely stopped. County records at opening showed far fewer closed sales than the developer's public claim that half the building had sold.

Kim then checked the building at night against the condo plan. Stacks of developer-owned units were dark. A drone pass over the garage, launched from a public alley and kept away from residences, showed large stretches of empty stalls. A former owner told her the unit was never occupied, was hard to rent, and sold as a wash or a loss. Kim sent detailed questions to SCG America before publishing. She said she received no response.

The larger point in the record is simple: once unsold homes became loan collateral, occupancy was no longer required for the owner to extract value.

Santa Monica is now adding a large wave of new housing along the same model of height, density bonuses, and corridor redevelopment. Downtown Santa Monica has reported more than 2,000 approved residential units, with hundreds completed in 2025 and more under construction. On Wilshire, the city has advanced or approved eight-story mixed-use projects in the 140- to 260-unit range, including 1902 Wilshire, 2025–2037 Wilshire, 2501 Wilshire, and the former Gap block at 1931 Wilshire. On Lincoln, new and redesigned projects include 1238 Lincoln, 1318 Lincoln, 1430 Lincoln, 1650 Lincoln, and Related's 280-unit complex at Lincoln and Broadway, which opened with a Vons and Equinox. An 18-story, 172-unit tower has also been approved at 1437 6th Street.

Those projects are being sold as housing supply. The Perla file is a warning that supply on paper is not the same as occupied homes.

What is not established is that Santa Monica's existing downtown towers already match Perla's vacancy pattern. No city occupancy census of the 6th and 7th Street high-rises was found that documents a clean split of one-third Airbnb, one-third tenants, and one-third empty. That breakdown comes from resident conversations, not from recorded deeds or a published unit-by-unit survey. It should be treated as a lead for official review, not as a completed count.

Two documented facts do make the comparison relevant. First, Santa Monica already treats vacancy as a municipal problem: the City Council has moved vacant-property registration and a rent registry for units outside rent control. Second, unhosted vacation rentals are illegal citywide. The only legal short-term use is hosted home-sharing in a primary residence. If whole units in new towers are circulating as Airbnbs, that would be a code-enforcement issue, not an accepted land-use outcome.

The question for Santa Monica is therefore not whether Wilshire and Lincoln will look like Perla tomorrow. It is whether the city will measure what those buildings actually become: occupied homes, leased apartments, illegal short-term inventory, or empty collateral. Perla shows that a tower can be "built," "sold" on paper, and still leave hundreds of units dark. Santa Monica is authorizing the next generation of those towers now. The records, lights, and leases should be checked before the same result is treated as a surprise.