Measure ULA, LA Developers, and the New Homeowner Promise: How 2025 Construction Trends Are Rewriting Urban Living
By 2025, Measure ULA has become impossible for Los Angeles developers to ignore, adding a 4%–5.5% transfer tax on deals above the roughly 5–10 million dollar range and forcing a hard reset on how big projects pencil out. Studies tie ULA to a sharp drop in sales of redevelopment parcels and roughly 1,900 multifamily units per year that no longer get built, which directly changes where and how builders choose to invest.
Instead of chasing maximum scale inside city limits, many owners are narrowing their focus: smaller infill sites, ADUs, townhomes, and targeted mid‑rise projects that can clear financing hurdles and still offer attractive exits under ULA’s tax regime. This shift is redefining what “successful” construction looks like in LA, with more emphasis on durable demand and less on speculative flipping.
From Volume to Value: How Construction Owners Are Pivoting
Aligning With Affordability: Maldini Builders Co. in a Public Housing Moment
While ULA has reduced some private multifamily production, it is also generating hundreds of millions of dollars for affordable housing, rent relief, and tenant protections, with city reports citing thousands of households assisted and hundreds of subsidized units funded or in the pipeline. That public investment changes the context in which private developers like Maldini Builders Co. operate: communities now expect new market‑rate projects to coexist with, or even support, broader affordability goals.
To navigate this, many construction owners are experimenting with structures that work with, not against, the new landscape. Examples include partnering with nonprofit housing providers on mixed‑income projects, targeting ULA‑funded sites or programs, or designing schemes that can tap local incentives while still appealing to middle‑ and upper‑income buyers. This blended approach helps offset some tax pressure while signalling to homeowners that their purchase is part of a larger, city‑wide housing solution.
The 2025 Promise to Homeowners: Fewer Speculative Towers, Better Everyday Homes
Taken together, Measure ULA and 2025 macro conditions—high rates, elevated construction costs, and stricter underwriting—have cooled LA’s most ambitious luxury and institutional projects, but they have not killed the city’s appetite for building. Instead, the developers still active in Los Angeles are increasingly those willing to deliver homes that stand up to closer scrutiny from lenders, regulators, and buyers.
For homeowners, this shift means a slower skyline but a better fit between what is built and how people actually live: more human‑scaled communities, more attention to energy and maintenance costs, and designs that prioritize usability over spectacle. In a city once defined by speculative booms and busts, the Measure ULA era is pushing construction owners toward a more disciplined, homeowner‑first model—one where every new front door has to earn its place in Los Angeles’s future.
