Hermosa Beach, CA

South Bay Homes Market Update for Week of 1/31/2010

A week has passed and there is no doubt that the number of home sales in the South Bay is on the rise. Whereas, there were 58 new listings posted two week's ago, there were an additional 71 posted this past week. Of these listings, 38 are single family homes and 33 are either townhomes or condos.

The number of closings increased as well by a significant amount. There were 35 escrows closed this past week, up from 24 the prior week. And to add to the encouraging news, 69 homes were sold and entered into escrow compared to 43 the prior period...

The most expensive closing was for $4,400,000 on Hermosa Avenue in Hermosa Beach. This is a record sale for this street. The least expensive closed sale was for a $295,000 condo in Redondo Village.

Sales of South Bay homes are pushing well ahead of the pace of last year.

Visit us at Beachtime Realty

Search Hermosa Beach Homes

90254 Foreclosure Updates 1/9/2010 - 2/4/2010

Here are some homes in various stages of foreclosure in Hermosa Beach

90254:

2634 Manhattan Ave

501 Herondo Street #16

1835 Manhattan Avenue

1504 Monterey Blvd

1018 8th Street

1030 8th Place

701 8th Street

3005 Manhattan Avenue

1707 Pacific Coast Highway #216

2416 Hermosa Avenue

447 Herondo Street #203

628 Gould Avenue

If you are interested in any of these homes or other homes, contact us at 310.989.4466 or chamb@earthlink.net

www.RebeccaChambliss.com

South Bay Homes Market Update Week of 1/24/10

I hope to get in the habit of providing a weekly update of the South Bay home market activity.

There have been 58 homes added to the market as new listings this week to date. Of these, 29 are single family homes and 22 are townhomes.

Of the homes that were in escrow going into the weekend, 24 closed out.

An additional 43 sales were made over the past five days and opened escrow. Last year's sale pace was 35 sales per week. On the surface, this is another indication that we are coming out of the depths of the painful drop-off here since the inception of the financial crisis.

Visit us at Beachtime Realty

Search Hermosa Beach Homes

South Bay Homes Pricing Strategies

I find it very intriguing that there are many listings in the South Bay real estate market that are clearly priced well above current market rates. This has been the subject of many blogs on AR and yet it still fascinates me how frequently it occurs. In the South Bay region of Los Angeles, the median sales prices of 2009 were fairly consistent with late 2004. This has been pretty well documented locally and the market consistently reaffirms this point. Nonetheless, there are numerous examples of listings currently on the market at 2007 pricing when most sub-areas here hit the mountaintop. Many of these homes have already had downward adjustments and may have second or third rounds of corrections.

A case in point is the strand, home to all the beachfront properties in Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach. There are currently ten homes listed for sale on the strand and five of them are priced at over $10,000,000. Considering what has been happening with the financial markets and the fact that only one home has sold on the strand for $10,000,000 or more this entire past decade, it seems quite unrealistic to think that there is now a market at this price point.

So I am left wondering, is it possible to will a market to recovery? For that matter, is it possible to create a demand when one hasn't really existed there before and at a time when securing high end financing is challenging at best?

Visit us at Beachtime Realty

Search Hermosa Beach Homes

Hermosa Beach East Home Sales in 2009

A vast majority of the sub-areas of the South Bay experienced a leveling off of or an increase in the number of homes sold in 2009 from 2008. Many of these areas appeared to do this with discounted pricing, as median sales prices dropped in all but a handful or so of the areas. The Hermosa Beach East area had the same number of single family home sales this past year as the year before, but the median sales price dropped by 10 percent during the process. This sales price is now over 20 percent below the peak reached back in 2006. The number of sales are less than half of what they were at the beginning of the decade when there were 95 single family homes sold. Nonetheless, the median sales price in 2000 was $475 K and now stands at just under $800 K, a solid return on investment for that period. Additional good news is that sales data from this month already show promise of a possible uptick here in the months ahead.

There have already been seven sales here in the past few weeks. Of these, one has already closed escrow. This is an auspicious pace for 2010 and, more impressively, both the average and median sales prices for these sales exceeds $1 M. If this trend continues, this area will be flirting with the peak sales year of 2006 and may even break the record. The current inventory of homes on the market stands at about five months, which could also be considered encouraging.

On a side note, there are some areas in the South Bay that have seen median sales price hits because of a sharp decline in the sales of new homes. The Hermosa Beach East area was not impacted much by this. There were six new homes sold in 2008 and the number dropped to four last year. These numbers have an effect, but not a significant one when spread across 40 total sales.

Visit us at Beachtime Realty

Search Hermosa Beach Homes