Hawthorne apartment buildings traded at a 5.8 percent cap rate and $233,488 a door last year. Here is what that means if you own here.

Published July 25, 2026

A brokerage report puts Hawthorne's trailing 12 month apartment cap rate at 5.8 percent and $233,488 per unit. Here is the honest read on what those numbers actually tell an owner.

Apartment buildings in Hawthorne traded at an average 5.8 percent cap rate and roughly $233,488 per unit over the trailing 12 months, according to a market report from Bluechip Investment Group, a South Bay multifamily brokerage. That is one data point from one brokerage's own deal flow, not a neutral index, so I want to walk through what it actually tells you and where it stops telling you anything.

I manage rentals across the South Bay, Hawthorne included, and owners ask me some version of this question constantly. What is my building worth right now. The honest answer starts with being clear about where a number like 5.8 percent comes from before you do anything with it.

Where this number comes from, and why that matters

Bluechip's report is built from its own transaction history in Hawthorne over the trailing 12 months, not a county assessor database or a neutral market wide index. The firm reports total sales volume of $50.2 million across 215 units, an average sale price of $2.1 million per transaction, and the $233,488 per unit figure comes out of dividing that volume by unit count across the deals it tracked.

That is a real, if limited, sample. A single active brokerage in a submarket the size of Hawthorne typically touches a meaningful share of the small apartment building trades that happen there, so the number is not made up. But it is also not audited public data the way a county recorder's roll is, and a firm publishing its own numbers has a natural incentive to make the market look liquid and priced right. Take the 5.8 percent as a real, useful signal from someone close to the deals, not as gospel.

The two other numbers that matter more than the cap rate

The cap rate gets the headline, but two other figures in the same report are more useful for an owner deciding what to do next.

The first is time to sell: the report puts the average at 8.3 months for a Hawthorne apartment building over the same period, which it flags as longer than comparable South Bay submarkets. The second is the gap between asking price and sale price, reported at negative 4.3 percent, meaning properly priced buildings closed a little under their original ask.

Read together, those two numbers say more than the cap rate does on its own. An 8.3 month average hold to close, with sale prices landing close to but under asking, points to a market where buyers are disciplined and sellers who price aggressively sit longer. The report's own framing backs that up: it attributes Hawthorne's longer timeline mostly to pricing strategy, not to weak underlying demand. A well priced building still moves. An overpriced one sits.

What a 5.8 percent cap rate means for value

Cap rate and value move in opposite directions for a given income stream. If your building throws off the same net operating income and the market cap rate an appraiser or buyer would apply moves from, say, 5.3 percent to 5.8 percent, the implied value of that income stream goes down, not up, because a buyer now wants a higher return for the same dollars of income.

So a 5.8 percent average in Hawthorne is not automatically good or bad news. It matters relative to where the market sat before and relative to your own building's actual net operating income, not the neighborhood average. Two buildings a block apart with different unit mixes, different deferred maintenance, and different rent rolls will not trade at the same cap rate even in the same submarket and the same month.

What this means if you own here

If you are holding and not selling, this data point is mostly informational. It tells you buyer appetite for Hawthorne multifamily is active enough that a brokerage is closing deals and tracking them, and it gives you a rough, imperfect benchmark for what a similar building nearby has sold for.

If you are weighing a sale, the pricing gap matters more than the headline cap rate. A report showing well priced properties closing close to asking, and overpriced ones sitting for months, is a pretty direct signal: get a real appraisal or a broker opinion of value grounded in your building's actual rent roll and expenses before you set an ask, rather than backing into a number from a market average.

If you are weighing a purchase, the same logic runs in reverse. A 5.8 percent average cap rate is a starting reference point for negotiating, not a price you should assume. Underwrite the specific building's income and expenses, and treat any number from a single firm's marketing material as one input among several.

Common questions

Is a 5.8 percent cap rate good for Hawthorne right now? It depends entirely on your building's own income and expenses relative to price. As a submarket average from one brokerage's deal flow, it is a reference point, not a verdict on any specific property. Confirm with a broker opinion of value or a licensed appraiser before pricing a sale.

Why did this report come from a brokerage instead of a neutral source? Small apartment building sales in submarkets like Hawthorne are not always captured in real time by large commercial data platforms. A brokerage active in the area often has the freshest local transaction count, but its numbers reflect its own deals and its own incentive to present the market favorably, so they are worth cross checking against county records or a second broker's opinion.

What does the 8.3 month average time to sell tell me? It suggests Hawthorne apartment buildings, on average, took longer to close than some nearby South Bay submarkets over the same period, and that pricing discipline, not weak demand, was the main driver according to the report.

Last verified: July 25, 2026. Cap rate, price per unit, time to sell, and sale volume figures are drawn from Bluechip Investment Group's published Hawthorne market report as of that date and reflect that firm's own transaction data, not a neutral index. This is general information for property owners, not investment or legal advice. Confirm current pricing and terms with a broker or licensed professional before acting.

Kellie

Schofield Properties

323 Richmond Street, El Segundo, CA 90245

Topics: investing, hawthorne, south-bay, cap-rates

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Schofield Properties is a family run property management company at 323 Richmond St, El Segundo, CA 90245. We have managed the South Bay since 1972 and personally oversee about 186 doors today. Book a call to talk about your property.