Drive down Topanga Canyon Boulevard through Warner Center this fall and the Promenade Mall is simply not there anymore. The demolition that started in January finished by August, and where a shuttered shopping center used to sit, there is now 52 acres of graded, open ground. It looks like momentum. It looks like the next decade of Woodland Hills has already started.
It hasn't. As of the most recent reporting on the project, no construction has begun on the district that is supposed to replace the mall, and no building permits have been issued for it. The land is cleared. The plan is not approved. That gap between what you can see from the road and what has actually been signed off by the City of Los Angeles is the same gap that shows up when you try to answer a much simpler question: what does a house in Woodland Hills actually cost right now.
Three Reports, Three Very Different Prices
Pull up three market reports for Woodland Hills this year and you will get three different neighborhoods. Redfin's tracking put the median sale price over the three months ending in May 2026 at $1.2 million, down 5.2 percent from the same stretch a year earlier, even as the average asking price for the month climbed 5.7 percent year over year. Houzeo's read on the same window landed at $1,195,000, essentially flat. A separate market report from June 2026 put the median at $2,185,000, up 8.4 percent year over year, with the busiest price band sitting between $1.8 million and $2.3 million. Movoto's February 2026 snapshot showed a median list price of $1,399,999.
None of these numbers are wrong. They are measuring different slices of the same ZIP codes. A portal pulling every closed sale in 91364 and 91367, including condos near Warner Center and starter homes north of the boulevard, will land closer to $1.2 million. An agent whose recent transactions skew toward gated, canyon-view estates will report a median twice that high, because that is the inventory that agent is actually selling. Neither figure describes "Woodland Hills." Each describes a slice of it.
Ventura Boulevard Is Doing the Actual Work
The line that actually explains the spread runs along Ventura Boulevard itself. South of the boulevard, the housing stock tilts toward larger lots, canyon views, and gated enclaves. Walnut Acres sits in this zone, an agrarian-zoned pocket developed in the 1940s and 1950s where lots still run one to two acres and the RA zoning still permits horses, goats, and chickens on parcels that have since been subdivided but remain generous by Valley standards. Mountain Park Estates and Westchester County Estates, both guard-gated, sit in the same general belt, with homes on lots up to roughly 1.3 acres commanding prices well above the ZIP code average.
North of the boulevard, the picture changes. Mid-century homes, townhomes, and newer condo product start in the $600,000s, and the Warner Center district itself has been built around density on purpose since the city adopted the Warner Center 2035 Plan in December 2013, a framework that explicitly favors mixed-use and transit-oriented building over the office parks and low-rise retail that used to define the area.
So when a report says "Woodland Hills median," ask which side of the boulevard the sample actually came from. A buyer comparing a listing near Walnut Acres to one near Warner Center is not comparing two houses in the same market. They are comparing two markets that happen to share a ZIP code.
What Actually Changed at Warner Center This Year
The reason this geographic split matters more in 2026 than it did five years ago is the project sitting on the old Promenade site. In April 2025, the Kroenke Organization, the ownership group behind the Los Angeles Rams, announced Rams Village at Warner Center, a mixed-use development on the combined footprint of the former Promenade Mall and the adjacent Anthem office parcel. The plan calls for more than 3,100 homes, a 350,000-square-foot Rams headquarters and training facility, two indoor entertainment venues seating 5,000 and 2,500 people, and nearly two million square feet of commercial and retail space, all built in phases over roughly a decade at a cost the team has put at up to $10 billion.
The team's own project page describes it as one of the region's largest neighborhood improvement projects, built to conform with the Warner Center 2035 Plan's density goals rather than fight them. The Rams have had a presence on the site since their temporary practice facility opened in August 2024, and both of the existing outdoor grass fields are set to be retained once the permanent headquarters is built.
Cleared Ground Is Not an Approved Permit
Here is where the timeline matters more than the renderings. Demolition of the Promenade began in January 2026 and wrapped by August, which is the part everyone driving past can see for themselves. What comes next is not yet locked in. Construction on the permanent buildings, starting with the Rams headquarters, is targeted for 2027, with full build-out expected to take roughly a decade after that. A recent report on the project's status is direct about where things actually stand: no construction has started on the new district, and no building permits have been issued for it. The city's approval process is still ahead of the project, not behind it.
That distinction is the one worth sitting with if you are pricing a home near Warner Center this year. Cleared land signals that a project is real. It does not signal that it is entitled, permitted, or funded through completion. A decade is a long time for a plan to shift, get value-engineered, or get delayed through the standard entitlement process that any project of this scale has to clear in the City of Los Angeles. Pricing a listing today as if Rams Village were already built is pricing in an outcome that is still years from its first shovel.
The Tax Line Nobody Draws on a Map
There is a second local mechanism that only applies on one side of a boundary most buyers never think about, and it has nothing to do with Ventura Boulevard. Woodland Hills sits inside the incorporated City of Los Angeles. Calabasas and Hidden Hills, both a short drive away, are separately incorporated cities and do not carry the same tax exposure.
That matters because of Measure ULA, the City of Los Angeles transfer tax voters approved in November 2022. As of transactions closing after June 30, 2026, the current thresholds are $5.4 million and $10.9 million: a 4 percent tax applies to sales between those two figures, and a 5.5 percent tax applies above the higher threshold. The tax is calculated on the entire sale price once a transaction crosses the line, not just the amount above it, which is why real estate professionals in Los Angeles refer to the boundary as a cliff rather than a bracket.
Most Woodland Hills transactions never approach that floor. But the larger hillside estate parcels south of Ventura, the ones already commanding the higher end of that split median, occasionally do. A seller listing a gated estate near Walnut Acres or Mountain Park Estates at $5.5 million is pricing in a very different net-proceeds calculation than a seller listing an equivalent home a few miles away in Calabasas, purely because of which side of a city line the property sits on.
What This Means If You're Comparing Woodland Hills to a Neighboring City
If you are weighing Woodland Hills against Calabasas, Agoura Hills, or another Conejo Valley community, treat the published median as a starting question rather than an answer. Ask which side of Ventura Boulevard the comparable sales came from. Ask whether the report you're reading is pulling from portal-wide data or from one agent's recent closings. And if the property in question is priced anywhere near $5 million, ask whether it sits inside the City of Los Angeles at all, since that single fact changes the transfer tax math regardless of what the listing itself looks like.
None of this makes Warner Center's future irrelevant to Woodland Hills values. It makes it a slower-moving variable than the cleared land suggests, one that is likely to show up gradually as visible construction actually begins rather than all at once this year.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Rams Village at Warner Center already under construction? No. Demolition of the former Promenade Mall finished in August 2026, but construction of the new development has not started and no building permits have been issued as of the most recent reporting. Permanent construction is targeted to begin in 2027.
Why do different sources report such different median prices for Woodland Hills? Because "Woodland Hills" spans everything from condos near Warner Center to gated estates south of Ventura Boulevard on lots of an acre or more. A portal-wide median and an agent-specific median are sampling different parts of that range, and both can be accurate at the same time.
Does the Los Angeles mansion tax apply to homes in Woodland Hills? It can. Woodland Hills is inside the City of Los Angeles, so Measure ULA's transfer tax thresholds apply to qualifying sales here. As of transactions closing after June 30, 2026, that means a 4 percent tax between $5.4 million and $10.9 million and 5.5 percent above that. Neighboring cities like Calabasas and Hidden Hills, which are separately incorporated, do not carry this tax.
If you are trying to price a Woodland Hills sale, or figure out what a Warner Center-adjacent listing is actually worth against one south of Ventura, that is exactly the kind of comparison Michelle Price Realty Group works through with clients before a number ever goes on a sign. Request a confidential consultation and we'll walk through which market your property actually belongs to.
