You can buy 'cheap' in LA, but you won't own your home and may oust a renter
In April, a two-bedroom unit in a 1920s Silver Lake fourplex sold for about $530,000. The Spanish-style home was recently renovated and has a seemingly choice location - a short walk from restaurants on Sunset Boulevard. Still, it sold for about $250,000 less than the median price of a two-bedroom condo in the neighborhood.
A month earlier, another two-bedroom unit, this one in a renovated building in Echo Park a half-mile from the lake, sold for even less: $449,000. It was the cheapest sale in that immediate area all year.
Similar properties are popping up in pricey and gentrifying neighborhoods across Los Angeles, giving the middle class a chance to buy in communities they otherwise would struggle to afford.
But the buyers of such homes aren't purchasing a condo and won't actually own their individual unit. They'll own a share of the larger property.
In Los Angeles, a controversial form of co-ownership - called tenancy in common, or TIC - is taking root amid a shortage of affordable housing for everyone from low-income households
