Koreatown Deed Implies $36M, Then a $32M Permit Follows

A parcel at 2131 W 3rd St in Koreatown changed hands in a deed recorded Dec. 19, 2025, under recording document 0924745, and the buyer has already submitted a building permit declaring $32.0 million in construction value on the same site, according to Los Angeles County Assessor records for parcel (AIN) 5154018018.

California deeds carry no sale price on their face. The $36.0 million figure here is implied by the recorded documentary transfer tax: Los Angeles County charges $1.10 per $1,000 of value, and $36.0 million in value works out to roughly $39,600 in county transfer tax, which checks against the recorded amount on this deed. No buyer or seller name is confirmed in records reviewed for this story, and none is asserted here.

Why it matters

A land trade and a construction-value permit filing landing on the same parcel within the same stretch of county and city records is a concrete signal of an active, capitalized redevelopment plan, not a passive land hold. For anyone tracking Koreatown land assembly, this is the kind of buy-and-build sequence that shows capital moving into the submarket ahead of any public entitlement hearing or announcement. It also illustrates how little a deed alone says: the $36.0 million figure is a tax-implied floor, and the real commitment on this site is better read from the permit that followed it.

The numbers

The deed-implied price and the permit’s declared job value measure two different things and should not be added together or confused for one number. The $36.0 million figure comes from backing into value off the county’s $1.10-per-$1,000 documentary transfer tax rate; the $32.0 million figure is the construction cost the applicant declared to Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety on a permit that is submitted but not yet issued. Koreatown sits inside the City of Los Angeles, so Measure ULA, the city’s added transfer tax on sales above $5 million (4 percent) and $10 million (5.5 percent), would also apply here on top of the county’s rate since the deed value clears the $10 million threshold. At a $36.0 million implied price, that is roughly $1.98 million in city ULA tax, a separate levy from the $39,600 in county transfer tax and not combined into the $36.0 million headline figure.

What’s next

The permit is submitted, not issued, so LADBS plan check still has to clear it before any construction value becomes a construction start. No entity name on either the deed or the permit application was independently confirmed within this story’s research, so this account runs on the parcel’s own record trail rather than on a named buyer or developer. Watch the parcel (AIN 5154018018) for the permit’s issuance date and for whether the submitted $32.0 million scope changes in plan check, the next concrete marker on this site. For more on how land and permit values are diverging across the county, see three LA deeds that show land trading below permit value and the broader Los Angeles market coverage.