The Olympics Are Coming to Los Angeles in 2028: How This Could Affect the City—and Its Real Estate

Now that the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games wrapped up over the weekend, people are already looking ahead to the next Summer Olympics, which will be held in Los Angeles in July 2028.

This will be the third time the City of Angels has hosted the event—but the last time was four decades ago, in 1984.

Preparations are already underway to get L.A. in shape for the many millions who will attend. In particular, how will this city unsnarl the traffic jams its infamous for? Apparently by making this Olympics a “no-car games.”

“We’re already working to create jobs by expanding our public transportation system in order for us to have a no-car games,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a press conference on Saturday. “And that’s a feat in Los Angeles, because we’ve always been in love with our cars, but we’re already working to ensure that we can build a greener Los Angeles.”

Bass told reporters she plans to borrow 3,000 buses from across the country to help make this happen, and she will be asking businesses to allow their employees to work from home during the 17-day Olympics to avoid gridlock.

According to the LA28 organizing committee, no one will be told they cannot drive to a competition, but public transportation could be an easier option.

Angelenos have mixed emotions

“As a sports fan, I am very excited about the Olympics and would love to go to some events, but I am wary of the logistics and transportation issues,” says Stacy Walter, a transcriptionist in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Clarita.

Although Walter has lived in Los Angeles for 12 years, she says she has used public transportation only about a dozen times max.

“Each time, it was less than stellar,” she admits. “I got to where I had to go, but safety was always on the back of my mind.”

Indeed, safety is another issue that Bass is attempting to address now by cleaning up the city streets. By the 2028 Olympics, reports warn that Olympians could be greeted by 30,000 homeless.

“It would be awful if that were the case, but I want you to know that we’re going to do everything to make sure that it’s not,” Bass told NBC Los Angeles. By the Olympics, “the goal is a dramatic reduction in street homelessness.”

Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered state agencies to dismantle homeless encampments. But Bass worries that would just result in shuffling the homeless from one area to another until there is more permanent housing built, so she has not acted on the order yet.

How the Olympics may affect Los Angeles real estate

Los Angeles also plans to make many improvements in the next four years, including remodeling the L.A. Convention Center, expanding the rail system, and improving the airport—and those infrastructure and transportation improvements will likely raise property values, if history is any indication.

“If we look at home price growth in the last two U.S. Olympic cities—Atlanta and Salt Lake—we see a notable increase in the rate of growth about one year prior to the Olympic games,” says Realtor.com® senior economist Ralph McLaughlin. “This is then followed by a moderation of price growth leading up to the month of the event.”

Why do prices usually spike a full year before the Olympics?

Investment into local infrastructure to support the games might be finished a year or so before the games begin, and thus manifest themselves into home values at that time rather than around the time of the event, according to McLaughlin.

“There could also be investor speculation that occurs a year or so before the games,” he says.

Predictions from Los Angeles real estate pros

As the exposure and excitement surrounding the Olympics and Los Angeles heat up, the housing market will, too, according to Los Angeles real estate agents and developers.

“With the Olympics heading our way, we’re going to see a boom in investors snapping up rental properties,” says Marco Gonzalez, a real estate agent at Coldwell Banker Realty in Pasadena, CA. “They’ll want to be ready for the influx of tourists.”

Buyers will probably have to plunk down more for prime properties as competition heats up.

“Opening ceremonies will be at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, which is already seeing neighborhood improvement and growing home values,” says Jon Schwartz, a real estate agent for the Fathom Realty Group’s Los Angeles office. “Neighborhoods surrounding Olympic venues will also see lasting price gains.”

Just exactly how much prices will spike is tough to say, since the Olympics is years away.

“I do feel L.A.’s home prices will still be astronomically high in 2028,” says California real estate developer Tyler Drew.

How the Olympics affected other markets

Salt Lake City real estate agent Joel Carson, president and principal broker at Utah Real Estate, saw the Olympics’ impact on the market firsthand during the Winter Olympics in 2002.

“I’ve been a real estate agent in Salt Lake City for over 30 years, and the Olympics put a lot of eyes on our city and how beautiful it was,” he says. “The real estate market is radically different now because of those Olympics. They put us on the map.”

Salt Lake City is excited to host the Winter Olympics again in 2034, Carson says, and real estate investors are already expressing interest a full decade before the games.

“The difference with this Olympics is that people are much more familiar with Utah this time around,” Carson says.

Before the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, there was a flurry of new construction and redevelopment of existing housing in the city. After the games, many new residents were attracted to the area.

“I’m a native Atlantan, so I was here for the Olympics, and it was amazing,” recalls Julie Brittain, real estate adviser and associate broker for Real Brokerage in Atlanta. “I got licensed the next year, and there was a huge building boom in Midtown. A lot of older buildings were turned into lofts, and I remember selling 13 lofts in one building alone. The vibe was very cool during the Olympics, and people wanted to live there because they thought the vibe would be the same as it was during the games.”

As a result, housing prices soared. Two of Brittain’s friends who lived in the Virginia-Highland district of Atlanta had their property values triple in less than 10 years after the Olympic games.

The Olympics’ impact on short-term rentals

It’s important to note that when the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics and the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics were held, platforms like Airbnb didn’t exist.

“What’s different today is the substantial prevalence of a short-term rental market in single-family real estate sector, and as such, we could see unexpected effects on the Olympic games on the Los Angeles housing market in 2028,” McLaughlin says.

In June 2024, the median home list price in Los Angeles was $1.2 million, according to Realtor.com.

Yet prices could go even higher as people snap up properties to turn into short-term rentals ahead of the Olympics, if Paris is any indication. There were 44% more short-term rentals listed there this summer than last, according to AirDNA, a short-term rental data analytics company.

“Sponsoring the Olympics will have a great impact on short-term and vacation housing,” says Denise Supplee, a nationwide real estate invester and co-founder of SparkRental.com. “This can be good on many levels for the short-term rental housing investor. First, occupancy will be close to full or at full capacity. Secondly, because of the tentative shortage, prices may be increased.”

And the demand for L.A. lodging is expected to be so great, everyday homeowners might just cash in, too.

“A lot of L.A. residents will make a small fortune by heading out of town for a week or two and renting out their homes during the Olympics,” says Schwartz. “I’m certainly planning on it.”