Los Angeles has one of the worst housing crisis in America. Our rents are the nation's least affordable. And City Hall has declared a “homeless emergency” as the number of families living on L.A.'s streets has increased 12 percent in two years.

Times are hard.

Except if you're rich. The high-end housing market in Los Angeles is booming. And when you're talking about high-end real estate in L.A., you're talking about some of the most expensive property on planet Earth.

The folks at Sotheby’s International Realty just released a three-month analysis of high-end homes. Pacific Palisades, it says, saw a 94 percent increase in single-family home sales from October 2014 to October 2015.

Frank Symons, Sotheby’s western region executive vice president, says sales in the area have been so brisk that they have actually pushed down the average selling price to only (cough) $3 million to $5 million. We'll take two!

“The revitalization of the Pacific Palisades area is clearly under way…,” he said. “Since June 2015, the Pacific Palisades market has not showed any signs of slowing down.”

The other top luxury neighborhoods in terms of sales volume in Los Angeles County included Westwood (sales were up 50 percent), Cheviot Hills (also 50 percent), Beverly Hills Post Office (the city of Los Angeles community north of Beverly Hills), and — come again? — Venice (46 percent), Sotheby's says.

If you want to buy a place that's at the top of the price game, you'll need to go to the Malibu coast, where prices are averaging near $10 milion, according to the analysis.


If you can't afford that, Beverly Hills proper ($9.2 million), Beverly Hills Post Office ($7.9 million), Brentwood ($5.6 million), and Pacific Palisades ($5 million) offer value for the bargain-minded blue blood.

If you're an average Angeleno just struggling to pay the rent, however, there's always a discarded cardboard box ($0).

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