The corridor struggled a bit in the 1990s from a weaker economy. But the Californian, a luxury building that opened in 2005, sold out within a few weeks, a sign of pent-up demand for homes along the corridor, where a new high-end building had not been constructed in about a decade.

The most expensive condos are still a bargain compared with places in Manhattan. Mr. Habibi estimates there are fewer than 1,000 individual condos in Los Angeles selling for north of $1,000 a square foot, clustered in only a half-dozen developments, mostly in Century City and Beverly Hills, and along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. One downtown condo development, the Ritz-Carlton Residences at LA Live, which started sales in 2007, has sold about 25 percent of its 224 apartments and is barely cracking the $1,000-a-square-foot level.

Mr. Habibi and others in the industry are betting the high-end condos that have already been built will be sold at healthy prices. They include the Carlyle Residences, by the developer of the Plaza condominiums in New York, and the Beverly West, which sold its first apartment for $5 million in late March, one month after opening for sales. Thirty-four more residences are available, ranging from $1.5 million to $22.4 million.

“A lot of that buyer pool,” Mr. Habibi said, “are your foreign buyers and bicoastal people who are looking for a low-maintenance alternative, a very nice place to live when they are in town.” The real estate downturn seems to have slowed an expected wave of new high-end condo buildings. A half-dozen developments that have won city approval are waiting on the sidelines for the market to firm up, said Jeffrey Hyland, a co-owner of the real estate company Hilton & Hyland in Beverly Hills.

At the Century, in Century City overlooking the Fox movie studios, most of the buyers are owners of Los Angeles estates looking to downsize for more hassle-free living, Ms. Osborn said. Every owner so far has at least two other homes, she said.

Some find it hard to give up their estates. The celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa owns an apartment at the Century that he bought furnished, but he still spends most of his time in his Beverly Hills home, Ms. Osborn said.