Bob Willis

The Mar Vista Heights Whittier neighborhood consists of the area north of Mar Vista Street, east of College Avenue and west of Catalina Avenue.  The area is renowned for its beautiful homes and great views.

This Market Report on Mar Vista Heights Homes for Sale will focus on Single Family Residences in this Whittier, California neighborhood.

As of today, there are 7 Single Family Residences for sale in the Mar Vista Heights area.  The asking prices range from a low of $549,000 to a high of $860,000, with an average of $688,700.

Two homes are currently in escrow.

The last home sold in Mar Vista Heights was on March 31. 

Five homes sold between January 1 and March 31, 2009, with an average asking price of $576,000.

Since there have been very few home sales in the Mar Vista Heights area recently, one way to get a better sense of the local market is to look at the entire City of Whittier. 

Below are some numbers about the City of Whittier home sales.

As of today, there are 285 Single Family Residences for sale in the City of Whittier.

329 homes are currently in escrow.

316 homes sold in the past three months.

109 homes sold during the month of June.

The average home in the City of Whittier sold in June took 71 days to sell. 

The average home sale price was $333,956, or an average cost per square foot of $236.01.

It would take 2.6 months, at the current rate of sales, for all the current Whittier homes on the market to sell. 

A Sellers’ Market is when there is less than 5 months of supply.  Whittier is currently in a very strong Sellers’ Market.  Whittier homes for sale that are priced above $500,000 are more plentiful; and the higher the price, the more advantageous it is for the buyer being able to have more leverage and less competition from other buyers.  See my blog on Friendly Hills homes for sale to learn about the Buyers’ Market in Friendly Hills.

If you own a home in Whittier, it is a very good time to sell.  Demand is high, and there are lots of buyers looking for their first home.

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Uptown Whittier is the heart of Whittier.  It still has the old-fashioned feeling of being the center of a small town, with all of the small shops still owned by local businesses that line Greenleaf Avenue. 

This Market Report on Uptown Homes for Sale will focus on Single Family Residences in this Whittier, California neighborhood.

As of today, there are 5 Single Family Residences for sale in the Uptown area.

Four homes are currently in escrow.

One home was sold during the month of June.

The average home in Uptown over the past 3 months took 199 days to sell. 

The average home sale price was $403,541, or an average cost per square foot of $224.94.

Since there have been very few home sales in the Uptown area recently, one way to get a better sense of the local market is to look at the entire City of Whittier. 

Below are some numbers about the City of Whittier home sales.

As of today, there are 285 Single Family Residences for sale in the Uptown area.

329 homes are currently in escrow.

316 homes sold in the past three months.

109 homes sold during the month of June.

The average home in the City of Whittier sold in June took 71 days to sell. 

The average home sale price was $333,956, or an average cost per square foot of $236.01.

It would take 2.6 months, at the current rate of sales, for all the current Whittier homes on the market to sell. 

A Sellers’ Market is when there is less than 5 months of supply.  Whittier is currently in a very strong Sellers’ Market.  Whittier homes for sale that are priced above $500,000 are more plentiful; and the higher the price, the more advantageous it is for the buyer being able to have more leverage and less competition from other buyers.  See my blog on Friendly Hills homes for sale to learn about the Buyers’ Market in Friendly Hills.

If you own a home in Whittier, it is a very good time to sell.  Demand is high, and there are lots of buyers looking for their first home.

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First, let me tell you what part of Whittier I am talking about. Friendly Hills is located in the north and northeast portion of the City of Whittier. As you rise from any other area up to the Friendly Hills, home prices generally rise with the elevation. There are a few other hill areas within Whittier, such as Hadley Hills, Spy Glass Hill and Mar Vista Heights, but Friendly Hills is the most upscale of all Whittier neighborhoods.

This Market Report on Friendly Hills Homes for Sale will focus on Single Family Residences in this Whittier, California neighborhood.

As of today, there are 33 Single Family Residences for sale in the Friendly Hills area.

Twelve homes are currently in escrow.

Seven homes were sold during the month of June.

The average home in Friendly Hills over the past 3 months took 126 days to sell.

The average home sale price was $738,866, or an average cost per square foot of $272.34.

It would take 6.6 months, at the current rate of sales, for all the current Friendly Hills homes on the market to sell.

You may have heard that we are in a Buyers’ Market, which has been promoted by the news lately. Most of Whittier is actually experiencing a Sellers’ Market, with the exception of Friendly Hills.

A Buyers’ Market is when there is over 6 months of inventory. Since Friendly Hills has 6.6 months of inventory, it is in a slight Buyers’ Market. At this time, the higher the price, the more advantageous it is for the buyer being able to have more leverage and less competition from other buyers.

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First, let me tell you what part of Whittier I am talking about.  Palm Park is anchored by the City of Whittier Palm Park, and bisected by the Greenway Trail.  Home prices are generally more expensive in the streets north of the Greenway trail than those south of the trail.

This Market Report on Palm Park Homes for Sale will focus on Single Family Residences in this Whittier, California neighborhood.

As of today, there are 3 Single Family Residences for sale in the Palm Park area.

Eight homes are currently in escrow.

Two homes were sold during the month of June.

The average home in Palm Park over the past 3 months took 185 days to sell. 

The average home sale price was $283,500, or an average cost per square foot of $240.05.

Since Palm Park is a very desirable place to buy a home and live in it, this area is in a Sellers’ Market.  There simply are not enough homes for sale for all the buyers that are out there.

This Sellers’ Market actually applies to all homes for sale in Whittier, CA that are priced under $500,000.  Whittier homes for sale that are priced above $500,000 are more plentiful; and the higher the price, the more advantageous it is for the buyer being able to have more leverage and less competition from other buyers.

If you own a home in Palm Park, it is a very good time to sell.  Demand is high, and there are lots of buyers in this price range looking for their first home.

Palm Park is a great neighborhood, with plenty of shopping, good schools, moderately priced homes and a stable population of people who have lived in their homes for many years.  Since the park is the center of the neighborhood, it also offers recreational activities such as basketball, swimming, tennis, soccer and a children’s playground.  Make sure you arrive at the park early on a weekend, because it is always full of people having fun!

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We had a famous movie star living catty-corner to our back yard. He was the child star Roger Mobley, who many people may remember as Gallagher, the kid detective in the Disney movies and TV specials. Roger was a couple of years younger than my brother, and he used to play with my brother and a bunch of his friends. He didn’t become real famous until after both of our families moved away.

When I was three and four years old, my older brother would put me in the red wagon, along with a dozen pop bottles, and take me to Safeway so we could exchange the bottles for the deposit. While at Safeway, he would usually buy each of us a pack or two of baseball cards. You know, the kind with the delicious bubble gum that came with the cards. The Safeway is long gone, and I believe it used to sit where there is now a McDonald’s, on the corner of Colima and Whittier Blvd.

Just a few blocks south of our house was another new home development being built. So, we took the red wagon over to the construction site and pulled plywood and 2 x 4s out of the trash piles, and then brought the materials home to build the fort. As I recall, it was very sturdy. My dad actually helped supervise the construction. I most vividly remember hitting myself on the chin with the claw of the hammer that I was swinging with two hands as I attempted to pound nails into the wood, and be useful as a 4 year old.

Can you imagine a bunch of kids digging a deep hole in the back yard while their father was away for work for a week? Well, my brother and some of his friends and I had the brilliant idea of digging our own swimming pool. When the hole got deep enough, the older boys lowered me into the hole on a rope, and I would scoop up the dirt into a bucket for them to pull up with the rope. I have no idea why our mother allowed us to get away with digging that hole. Maybe she didn’t see it, because it was right next to the fort that we had built, and it may have been hidden by the fort.

There was a professional photographer who, just before Christmas 1957, walked the neighborhood with his pony, and took photographs of children on the pony as he went from door to door. So, here you see “Cowboy Bob” on his pony in 1957, in the back yard of the La Forge house. I remember very clearly getting up on this pony to have my picture taken. I was very happy and excited.

My first school, where I went to kindergarten, was Orchard Dale Elementary. Of course, as a five year old, I walked to school with my best friend, Tommy, who lived across the street. People were much less paranoid back in the fifties. We were always home from kindergarten in time to see the real Cowboy Bob on television. One of our mothers would fix us sandwiches, and we would eat lunch either at his house or at mine every day.

Despite the neighborhood being very safe for children, we did have a very strange ice cream delivery man. He really gave everybody the creeps. He would always say, “Want some ithe cream little boy?”, or, “Want some ithe cream, little girl?”, in a very strange way. He was creepy, for sure. To this very day, my sisters and I can imitate what that ice cream man said, with his lispy accent, and know exactly whom we are imitating.

In addition to having a regular ice cream man, there was also home delivery of fresh milk to our front door every morning. It would come in glass bottles. I can remember shaking up the bottle so that the milk and cream would both come out when I poured my milk. The cream always floated to the top of the bottles, because homogenization was not yet used in processing dairy milk. Milk was much better then.

There was also a Helms Bakery truck that drove through the neighborhood two or three days a week. The delicious smell of the freshly baked bread would waft through the neighborhood whenever the Helms man opened up the back of the truck. It was truly the smell of Heaven.

This house had a fireplace in it that we loved to use during the winter. Dad ran a pipe to the fireplace, and drilled holes in it so we could use natural gas to start the wood fires easier. Nowadays, many home fireplaces are designed to use only natural gas. Below is a picture taken around Easter 1959 that shows the front porch and the chimney.

We left our Whittwood home in September after kindergarten, and I will always remember it fondly.

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