Despite a general dip in commercial construction, the Los Angeles area commercial space rental market continues to demonstrate a strong upward trend, filling many of the area’s vacancies. This trend is being fueled by the city’s status as a global hub city for the technology, media, and entertainment industries, particularly as investment shifts onto new content streaming platforms. This shift is necessitating a major expansion in the commercial enterprises adjacent to the digital content creation world, including branding and social media, advertising, and production and post-production industries.

Though new commercial construction projects have slowed, the commercial construction industry is mainly focused on interior improvement and repurposing projects for existing commercial office space, a trend that has continued to build strong momentum since 2018. Major players like Google and Netflix are persistently leasing and repurposing massive tracts of commercial office space for use in the nascent online streaming industry, and many smaller businesses are following their wake.

Los Angeles’s residential construction market is rapidly growing. Spurred by soaring housing costs on the coast, residents are increasingly looking to the east where major construction is taking place in the inland metropolitan areas, with multi-family housing construction projects specifically becoming very popular.

Owing to the commercial construction industry’s primary focus on renovation and repurposing projects rather than entirely new developments, residential development is forming a bulk of the new construction in the LA area. Recent reports have found that over 3,300 new residential units were completed in 2018, almost 7,000 were under construction at the end of 2019, and 35,000 total housing units are currently in development moving forward.

Investment is flooding into the LA area for multiple large-scale industrial construction projects, several of which are already underway. Chief among these and likely the city’s most ambitious current construction project is the five billion dollar future home of the NFL Rams and Chargers, the Los Angeles Stadium and Entertainment District at Hollywood Park. Even uncomplete, the stadium is already booked as the venue for the upcoming 2020 Superbowl, the College Football National Championship Game in 2023, and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Olympic Games. Nearing completion, the stadium has spurred a host of other large scale local projects, many tied to the upcoming Olympic Games. The LA area is also in the process of revamping its local highway systems, mass transit infrastructure, and several of its airports. There are also prospects of the long-awaited gold line light rail project from Pasadena to Claremont, as well as a proposed high-speed railway line running from Victorville to Las Vegas.