Sherman Oaks

Sherman Oaks is in the City of Los Angeles, in the southern San Fernando Valley. The Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council describes it as Mulholland Drive on the south, Burbank Boulevard on the north, the 405 on the west, and Coldwater Canyon on the east up to the 101. The Los Angeles Times' Mapping L.A. project puts it at 9.15 square miles, with 61,166 residents in the 2000 census, and notes that its density is among the lowest in the city.

The name comes from Moses H. Sherman. In 1909 a syndicate called the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Company, with Sherman on its board, bought 47,500 acres of the Valley. Sherman kept about 1,000 acres around what's now Ventura and Sepulveda boulevards, and that land was subdivided starting in 1927. The Valley had already voted to join Los Angeles in 1915 to get aqueduct water. Hazeltine Avenue is named for Sherman's daughter.

The borders have moved since. The city's SurveyLA report notes that parts of Van Nuys were re-identified as Sherman Oaks in 1991 and 2009. Neighbors are Studio City to the east, Encino to the west across the 405, Van Nuys to the north, and Bel Air and Beverly Crest over the hill.

The 405 and the 101 meet at the northwest corner of Sherman Oaks, and the numbers are large. Caltrans' 2023 counts show about 282,000 vehicles a day on the 405 just south of the junction and about 223,000 just north of it, and about 267,000 to 279,000 a day on the 101 at Van Nuys Boulevard. A 2015 national study by the American Highway Users Alliance ranked the 101 from Sepulveda to Laurel Canyon as the seventh-worst bottleneck in the country, and the 405 from Burbank to Ventura boulevards as 29th.

The Sepulveda Pass is the other half of the story. Metro says more than 400,000 trips cross the pass each day and that a typical commuter loses 59 hours a year to delay there. The state and Metro spent about $1 billion widening the 405 through the pass, including the 53-hour Carmageddon closure in July 2011, and the new 10-mile carpool lane opened on May 23, 2014.

A rail line is planned but not close. On January 22, 2026, Metro's board picked an underground heavy-rail line through the Sepulveda Pass, running from the Van Nuys Metrolink station to the E Line on the Westside. Metro estimates the cost at $24.2 billion in 2023 dollars, Valley station locations are still being refined, and there's no construction timeline yet.

In practice, where you live inside Sherman Oaks decides how much of this you feel. Blocks near the on-ramps can see cut-through traffic at rush hour, and houses right along the freeways hear them. If you work on the Westside, drive your commute at the hour you'd actually do it before you buy.

Sherman Oaks is in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and several of its neighborhood schools are affiliated charters. That means they're district schools that follow district policy with some extra flexibility. Dixie Canyon Community Charter, Riverside Drive Charter, and Sherman Oaks Elementary Charter are the elementary schools, and Louis Armstrong Middle School on Sunnyslope Avenue, which the board renamed from Millikan in February 2022, is an affiliated charter with performing arts and social and gender equity magnets. Independent charters are separate and aren't part of the district's Choices application.

Nearby magnets draw a lot of Sherman Oaks families. Van Nuys High has medical, science and math, and performing arts magnets, and Kester Avenue Elementary, a Richard Neutra design from 1951, has a gifted magnet for grades 1 to 5. One name confuses people: Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, grades 4 to 12, is actually on Erwin Street in Reseda, about 6 miles west.

Magnet seats run on points. LAUSD gives 12 points for moving up from a magnet in the same program, 4 points a year on a waiting list up to 12, 4 points if your resident school is predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian, and other non-Anglo, 4 if it's overcrowded, and 3 points for a sibling. If you turn down a magnet offer, you lose all your waiting-list points. The on-time window for the 2027-28 school year runs October 1 to November 6, 2026.

Private options inside Sherman Oaks include the Buckley School on Stansbury Avenue and Notre Dame High School on Riverside Drive. Assignments change, so run the address through LAUSD's school finder before you buy.

On September 25, 2026, our Sherman Oaks outline had 245 active listings. South of Ventura, the 73 houses for sale mostly asked between about $2.1 million and $4.3 million, and the top tenth asked more than $7.9 million. North of Ventura, the 64 houses mostly asked between about $1.8 million and $3.3 million, topping out near $5 million. The 86 condos were the entry point, most of them asking between about $460,000 and $830,000.

In the hills I start with fire and slope. That means the fire zone on the city and CAL FIRE maps, brush clearance history, a written insurance quote, and the permit history for any additions, retaining walls, and pools, because unpermitted hillside work is expensive to fix. I also check whether the lot falls under the Mulholland plan.

In the flats I look at the house itself: foundation and chimney work after 1994, the roof and the original plumbing on a 1950s ranch, and how close the lot sits to the 405, the 101, or the Van Nuys and Sepulveda on-ramps. On any condo I read the HOA's budget and reserve study.