Oppenheim Real Estate
Los Angeles's Preeminent Residential Brokerage Since 1889
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Oppenheim Real Estate

Early Los Angeles photo

Oppenheim Real Estate is a California licensed real estate brokerage specializing in the representation of buyers and sellers of luxury residential properties in Los Angeles. The Brokerage is currently owned and operated by Brett Oppenheim, who serves as the broker of record.

Since its founding in Hollywood in 1889, the Company has been successively renamed and operated by multiple members of the Oppenheim family for five generations. Oppenheim Real Estate is today, one of the oldest and preeminent real estate companies in the United States.

Jacob Stern
Jacob Stern

Founded in Hollywood by Jacob Stern in 1889 as The Stern Realty Co., Oppenheim Real Estate represents five generations of real estate development, management and brokerage services in Los Angeles. For more than 100 years the Company has impacted the landscape of Los Angeles, playing a central role in fostering Hollywood’s early entertainment industry, as one of the nation’s largest developers of HUD housing in the 1980’s, and with the continuous development and brokering of luxury residential properties.

“What started in Jacob
Stern’s horse barn at the
corner of Hollywood and Vine
has grown into a landmark
American industry.”
– U.S. Senator Chris Dodd – Chairman, MPAA

No influence was greater than the Company’s development of a five-acre parcel at the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Vine St. at the turn of the 19th Century. On that parcel Brett Oppenheim’s great-great grandfather, Jacob Stern, built his personal residence and one of Hollywood’s first great estates. However, it was the lease of the horse barn at the southwest corner of the property for $75 a month to three aspiring movie producers that would alter the course of Los Angeles. In that inauspicious horse barn, Cecil B. Demille, Jesse Lasky, and Samuel Goldwyn created Hollywood’s first movie studio, Paramount Pictures. The world’s first full-length feature film, “The Squaw Man,” was produced and premiered in the barn.

The Jacob Stern Estate in 1920
The Jacob Stern Estate in 1920. Vine Street (Right) Hollywood Boulevard (Top)

As Paramount Pictures began to thrive other production companies arrived, and film production grew into an economic force of early Hollywood. To accommodate this nescient industry the family further developed the Hollywood and Vine property, opening The Hollywood Plaza Hotel in 1925. The hotel cemented Hollywood and Vine as the premier destination of the entertainment industry and continued as Los Angeles’s most popular venue for film, radio and theatre stars of the1930s, 1940s and 1950’s.

“By the dawn of the 1930s the
corner of Hollywood and Vine
had become the symbolic
center of the motion picture
industry.”
– Paradise Leased - Steve Vaught

The family’s development of their property at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine as a destination for movie producers and entertainers fostered its ascension as the epicenter of the world’s entertainment industry. Jacob Stern’s horse barn is widely considered the birthplace of the movie industry, and has been designated a National Historic Landmark and currently serves as home to The Hollywood Heritage Museum. The Hollywood Plaza Hotel is also preserved as a California Historic Landmark.

“Real estate was in Jacob Stern’s heart.”
– The Story of Hollywood – Gregory Paul Williams
Oppenheim Real Estate Foundation

The Oppenheim Real Estate Foundation consistently donates to community organizations that fight local poverty and provide access to employment for underprivileged residents.