December 3, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — December 3, 2025
LOS ANGELES, CA — As more and more evidence grows that residential construction is surging in Los Angeles, the real estate industry case against Measure ULA looks ever more flimsy. Four different metrics suggest that after a dip with multiple causes, the real estate industry is factoring Measure ULA into its cost sheets and getting back to work.
“As Measure ULA’s collections grow nearly every quarter, and applications flood in to take advantage of L.A.’s new zoning, it’s time for the real estate industry to stop singing its ‘sky is falling’ refrain,” said Joe Donlin, director of the United to House L.A. coalition. “What’s clear is that Measure ULA is building homes, protecting renters, and creating jobs.”
The four signs that LA’s residential construction industry is adapting to a post Measure ULA world:
- rising transactions reflected in Measure ULA’s revenue and total sales steadily going up
- a flood of new project applications following the 2025 passage of the Citywide Housing Incentive Program in Los Angeles,
- steady growth in entitlements over a two-year period, and
- year-over-year gains in housing construction permits.
First, recent analysis points to a big jump in permits. After repeated criticisms of Measure ULA, the most recent Hilgard report showed that residential construction permits in Q3 of 2025 were 60% higher than the same period a year before, and also showed quarter-over-quarter rises throughout 2025.
Next, transactions and revenue keep going up: The number and value of transactions that are subject to Measure ULA has increased almost every quarter since Los Angeles began collecting the Measure ULA transfer tax (the wildfires account for the early 2025 dip). At the end of October 2025, total collections had reached $991 million. Information drawn from the Los Angeles Housing Department ULA Dashboard demonstrates this:
Third, CHIP applications reveal pent-up demand: The Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) rezoning brings opportunities and incentives to build more and make more money. Los Angeles’s rezoning passed two years after Santa Monica’s and 11 months after Pasadena’s, giving both markets a leg up on development. But within six months of Los Angeles passing CHIP in February 2025, LA received applications and pre-applications for 115 projects proposing 16,659 homes (according to the Department of City Planning) under the new rules.
Lastly, housing entitlements show a steady climb. Critics claim that permits have fallen, but the Department of City Planning reports that entitlements rose 52% from 2022-2024.
“It’s always more important to watch what developers do than to listen to what they say,” said Joan Ling (ret.) of the UCLA Urban Planning Department and the Ziman Center for Real Estate. “And these four signs of life suggest that what developers are doing is buying, selling and building homes.”
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About United to House LA
United to House LA brings together a unique coalition from the labor movement, affordable housing developers, and social justice and community-based organizations to work on the common goals of affordable housing, homelessness prevention, tenant protection, and good-paying jobs in the city of Los Angeles. The Coalition consists of over 240 organizations that worked to pass Measure ULA on the November 2022 ballot and which continue to advocate for the implementation of one of the most progressive and transformative affordable housing measures in the United States.