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The demand has much to do with the growth of Downtown as a cultural center, featuring amenities and nightlife that rival those of any neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Experts say that these developers are not being speculative or over-optimistic about the demand for new housing. Many ambitious residential projects were downgraded or cut altogether during the recession, and that sense of caution still lingers with lenders — partly why so few condominiums are being built despite the overall boom, according to Thomas Bohlinger, an executive vice president at brokerage firm CBRE. 

Many market watchers see stable prices, but no growth. Homes sell quickly, but there aren't many to choose from. And buyers are still struggling with high prices and an uptick in interest rates.

"We've basically run out of houses that people can afford," said Richard Green, director of USC's Lusk Center for Real Estate. "Three or four years ago, if you were a family making $60,000 there was plenty of stuff you could buy in Southern California. That's gone."

Hollywood began a comeback this century and has attracted billions of dollars of investment in housing, hotels, shops and entertainment. The neighborhood is enticing to a younger generation of entertainment professionals unperturbed by its seedy recent past, real estate expert Richard Green said.

"It was intimidating 30 years ago, like Times Square," said Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. "It's much nicer now. Hollywood is gentrifying very rapidly."

“For the past few years, it has sort of been a parlor game in L.A. real estate,” said Jenny Schuetz, a real estate professor at the University of Southern California. “Are we finally going to get an NFL team? And where?”

There are at least four other L.A. sites that have been proposed for a new stadium.

"Our keynote speaker, USC Lusk Center director Richard Green, discussed the connection between housing and the economy. If home builders delivered 1.5 million houses per year, the economy would be much steadier than it is, because housing leads the business cycle of life.

Southern California home prices jumped in December, the first significant increase since June.

You're likely to get a warm fuzzy feeling if you look at what your home is worth on Zillow, Trulia or any of the other real estate sites that provide values for millions of houses. Home prices have risen rapidly, and the value these sites assign to your home is sure to reflect that.

Rent has been steadily rising in Los Angeles County since the Great Recession. In the last year alone, apartment prices have risen by 2.6 percent to an average of $1,688 a month across the county.

Gary Painter, director of research for the University of Southern California-Lusk Center for Real Estate, said that home price growth is returning to historical norms. In the past, real estate prices have typically matched the rate of inflation.

“The only time there really was a deviation from the trend line was in the 2000s, when prices went sky-high and fell down well below the trend line,” he said. “But right now we’re very close to that trend line, and that makes me feel like prices are where they should be."