Lake Balboa Home Values: A Seller's Report on 198 Sales, September 2025 to September 2026

Written by Antonio Vaziri, Realtor, Epique Realty, DRE #01927866 · Last updated September 2026

Twenty-six Lake Balboa houses found a buyer within their first seven days on the market over the past year, and their median closing price landed 2.3 percent above the original asking price. Forty-one others were still on the market after two months, and that group closed at a median of 3.8 percent under what the sellers first asked. Same neighborhood, same twelve months, very different outcomes.

This report is for owners who want to understand what actually happened when their neighbors sold: what the houses were, how long they took and which features moved the price. Every figure comes from closed sales in the CRMLS Matrix, pulled on September 29, 2026, inside the Lake Balboa Neighborhood Council boundary described below.

The map behind every number here

Lake Balboa was part of Van Nuys until the Los Angeles City Council adopted the community name in 2007 (Council File 06-2613, final action November 2, 2007). Many listings and county records still say Van Nuys, and the ZIP code is 91406 for nearly all of it, so a ZIP-level search mixes Lake Balboa with Van Nuys east of the 405. That is why this report uses the neighborhood council's own lines instead.

Following the Lake Balboa Neighborhood Council's boundary description, the area runs from the 405 Freeway on the east to White Oak Avenue on the west (Louise Avenue north of Saticoy Street), and from Saticoy Street and Roscoe Boulevard on the north down to Victory Boulevard. East of Balboa Boulevard the boundary drops farther south through the Sepulveda Basin to the Los Angeles River. A notch between Valjean and Hayvenhurst Avenues, north of Vanowen Street, is Van Nuys Airport land and sits outside.

That southern reach matters to value. It puts the lake at Anthony C. Beilenson Park (6300 Balboa Boulevard), the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant and its Japanese Garden (6100 Woodley Avenue), and the Metro G Line's Balboa and Woodley stations inside the neighborhood. Van Nuys Airport, which Los Angeles World Airports describes as one of the busiest general aviation airports in the world on about 730 acres, fills the notch on the northeast side.

The twelve-month ledger by property type

Source: CRMLS Matrix, residential closed sales dated September 29, 2025 through September 29, 2026, map search drawn on the neighborhood council boundary; pulled September 29, 2026. "Days" means cumulative days on market as reported in the MLS.

Houses dominate. The median house was built in 1950 and has three bedrooms, and the median price per square foot for houses was $608. Only 4 of the 175 houses were built in 2000 or later, and they sold between $980,000 and $1,380,000. Most of what changes hands here is original midcentury housing, and the MLS records do not grade condition, so two houses of the same size can sit far apart in price.

Timing decided more than the asking price did

Seven more house sales were recorded with zero days on market, which usually means the sale was arranged before public marketing; they are left out of this table. Across all 175 houses, 55 closed above the original list price, 21 closed exactly at it and 99 closed below it.

Notice that the fastest group did not have the highest prices. Its median was $823,500, lower than the others. Smaller houses tended to move first. The expensive houses were not slow because they were expensive; the slow ones were the ones whose first price the market did not accept.

Square footage raised the price but lowered the price per foot

A seller with a 1,000-square-foot house and a seller with a 2,200-square-foot house should not use the same price per foot. Under 1,200 square feet, the median buyer paid $724 per foot and the typical sale took 12 days. Past 1,600 square feet the figure falls to roughly $525 per foot, because the land and the location are shared across more interior space. Pricing a larger house off a small house's per-foot number is one of the quickest ways to end up in the 61-day group.

By bedroom count, the 21 two-bedroom houses had a median of $750,000, the 97 three-bedroom houses $875,000, the 47 four-bedroom houses $995,000 and the 10 houses with five or more bedrooms $1,227,500.

Big lots behaved differently

The median Lake Balboa house sits on a lot of 6,541 square feet. The 15 houses on 10,000 square feet or more were the only group whose median closing price beat the original asking price, and 8 of the 15 sold above it. Several of the largest lots that sold are on Wish Avenue, Louise Avenue, Firmament Avenue and Forbes Avenue. The top sale of the year was a 1948 house of 3,885 square feet on a 20,189-square-foot lot on Firmament Avenue, which closed at $2,200,000 in May 2026. Extra land invites buyers who plan to expand or add a unit, and the zoning, setbacks and utilities on a specific parcel decide what is actually possible there, so check ZIMAS and the Department of Building and Safety before counting on it.

Quarter by quarter since last fall

The median house price moved from $850,000 in the last quarter of 2025 to $899,000 in the most recent quarter, and the median time on market shortened from 31 days to the low twenties. Quarterly medians shift with the mix of houses that happen to close, so read this as a direction over the year rather than a precise rate of appreciation.

Estate and trust sales set their own pace

Twenty of the 175 house sales were listed as trust or probate sales. Their median price was $790,000, below the $890,000 median of the 151 standard sales, but they moved faster (15 days against 28) and their median close matched the original list price. If you are handling a parent's house, the court and trust steps are separate from the sale itself; your attorney should confirm what authority you need before the house is listed.

What buyers can choose from right now

On September 29, 2026, the same map search showed 58 active listings (50 houses with a median asking price of $1,012,500, 4 townhomes with a median of $632,450 and 4 condos with a median of $440,000), plus 12 listings active under contract and 9 pending sales.

Two observations, one confirmed and one an estimate. Confirmed: the median asking price of active houses is higher than the median closing price of houses over the past twelve months ($1,012,500 against $885,000, a gap of $127,500). Part of that is mix, because larger houses are on the market now, and part of it is optimism that the closed sales have not yet tested. Estimate: 198 closings in a year works out to roughly 16 to 17 a month, so 58 active listings equal about three and a half months of supply at that pace.

Selling versus renting it out

Some owners ask whether to sell or lease. The same boundary produced 166 closed leases in the last twelve months (CRMLS Matrix, Residential Lease, pulled September 29, 2026). Houses leased for a median of $3,995 a month: two-bedroom houses about $2,950, three-bedroom houses $4,000 and four-bedroom houses $4,650. Apartments, condos, townhomes and units in small multi-unit buildings leased for a median of $2,600. The median lease listing took 37 days to rent.

Whether renting beats selling depends on your loan, your tax basis, the Los Angeles rules that may apply to the property (including just cause and relocation rules for certain rentals) and how long you plan to hold it. Those are questions for your tax advisor and an attorney, not for a market report, but the rent figures above give you a real starting point for that conversation.

Where I have worked in Lake Balboa

In 2021 I represented the buyers of a 1949 house on Marlin Place, inside these boundaries, and it went into escrow 11 days after it was listed. My office base is Encino, a few minutes south across the Sepulveda Basin, and I work throughout the nearby Valley communities of Tarzana, Woodland Hills and Reseda. When I prepare a pricing opinion here, I start from the same closed sales this report uses, filtered to houses of your size, lot and condition.

Projects that could change the picture

Each item below carries its status on the date of the report cited. Proposals can change, shrink or stall, and a project listed as approved may never be built.

• Under construction17100 Victory Boulevard. Linc Housing is building 192 affordable and supportive apartments plus two manager units in two five-story buildings, with about 1,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, near the G Line's Balboa Station. Framing was underway (Urbanize LA, August 19, 2026).
• ProposedBalboa Station joint development, 6338 Balboa Boulevard. Metro selected LA Family Housing to plan 321 income-restricted apartments on the G Line park-and-ride lot in two phases, with about 13,690 square feet of commercial space and a transit plaza. No approvals or schedule have been announced (Urbanize LA, May 14, 2026).
• Approved16955 Sherman Way. A four-story building with 111 apartments and about 4,500 square feet of retail on the former restaurant site near Van Nuys Airport. The City Council approved the zone change in August 2024 (Council File 24-0450; Urbanize LA, August 19, 2024). A construction start has not been confirmed.
• Proposed17630 Sherman Way. A 39-unit, four-story mixed-use building was proposed in 2020 to replace an auto shop (Urbanize LA, December 29, 2020). No later public update was found.
• Under constructionTillman Advanced Water Purification Facility, 6100 Woodley Avenue. A $740 million project to purify 25 million gallons of recycled water a day to replenish the San Fernando Basin. Groundbreaking was December 2, 2024, with completion expected in December 2027 (Construction Dive, December 3, 2024).
• OpenThe Japanese Garden (SuihoEn). The garden at the Tillman plant closed from February 2026 for a lake bypass construction project and is open again on its posted schedule (The Japanese Garden website, checked September 2026).
• ApprovedLA28 Valley Zone, Sepulveda Basin. The Olympic venue plan places BMX racing and freestyle, skateboarding, modern pentathlon and 3x3 basketball in temporary venues in the Sepulveda Basin during the July 14 to 30, 2028 Games (LA28, April 15, 2025; Hoodline, February 17, 2026).
• Pending voteLos Angeles River bike and walk path, Vanalden Avenue to Balboa Boulevard. An $84 million construction contract for this 2.9-mile segment, which ends at the neighborhood's southwest corner, was scheduled for a Board of Public Works vote on September 28, 2026, with a goal of opening before the 2028 Olympics (Streetsblog LA, September 25, 2026).
• Under constructionMetro G Line Improvements. A $668 million program adding bridges at Van Nuys Boulevard and Sepulveda Boulevard, east of this neighborhood, plus railroad-style crossing gates and signal priority along the busway, scheduled through the end of 2027 (Metro project page and fact sheet, 2025).
• Plan releasedSepulveda Basin Vision Plan. The city's long-range plan for the basin was released in final form in June 2024. Individual projects in it, such as a Balboa aquatic center, remain proposals without published schedules (Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering).
• Not in this areaSepulveda Transit Corridor. The route Metro's board selected on January 23, 2026 runs underground from the Van Nuys Metrolink station to the Westside and meets the G Line at Van Nuys Boulevard, east of the 405. It does not have a station in Lake Balboa (Metro, The Source, January 2026).

No shopping center openings or closings inside the boundary were reported in the sources reviewed for this update.

Public schools with Lake Balboa addresses

The public schools below have street addresses inside the boundary used in this report, according to the California Department of Education School Directory (records updated August and September 2026). Each name links to that school's page on the California School Dashboard, where you can review the state's own reports. Attendance at a district school follows the exact home address, and magnet and charter schools enroll through their own application processes. To see which Los Angeles Unified schools serve a specific address, use the LAUSD Resident School Identifier.

Street addresses and grade spans from the CDE School Directory; Dashboard links point to the 2025 reports. Cohasset Street Elementary sits on Saticoy Street, one of the boundary streets.

Browse listings inside these boundaries

Both searches below use the same boundary drawn on the map, so they show homes inside Lake Balboa instead of all of ZIP 91406. Now and then a listing with an imprecise map location can appear; check the address on any listing that interests you.

For the city-wide view of current listings, see Lake Balboa homes for sale. Owners on the Van Nuys side of the 405 can start at Sell your Van Nuys home, and every guide on the site is listed on the neighborhood guides page.

Data pulls and citations

• CRMLS Matrix, Residential: closed sales September 29, 2025 to September 29, 2026 (198 records), and active, active under contract and pending listings, map search on the neighborhood council boundary; pulled September 29, 2026. Original list prices from the MLS records.
• CRMLS Matrix, Residential Lease: closed leases, same boundary and period (166 records); pulled September 29, 2026.
• Lake Balboa Neighborhood Council, "Boundaries" page (lakebalboanc.org), and Los Angeles City Clerk, Council File 06-2613.
• Los Angeles World Airports, Van Nuys Airport general description (lawa.org).
• Urbanize LA (August 19, 2026; May 14, 2026; August 19, 2024; December 29, 2020); Construction Dive (December 3, 2024); The Japanese Garden (thejapanesegarden.com); LA28 (April 15, 2025); Hoodline (February 17, 2026); Streetsblog LA (September 25, 2026); Metro G Line Improvements project page and fact sheet; Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering, Sepulveda Basin Vision Plan; Metro, The Source (January 2026).
• California Department of Education School Directory and California School Dashboard (2025 reports).