Saturday, November 3, 2007

Monthly inventory update

11/2 - SM inventory <$3M is down 2% for the week, but up 5% for the month; PP <$2M is up 16% for the week and up 12% for the month, and MV is down 2% for the week but up 13% for the month. Total Westside inventory is up 3.6% to 1,731, highest this year. This constrasts to last year, when inventory had begun its end-of-year decline in October.

10/26 - SM inventory <$3M is down 5% and PP <$2M is down 4%, due to few new listings, but MV is up another 3%. "Freeway Close" dropped its price another $60K.

10/19 - SM inventory <$3M is down 4%, PP <$2M is down 13%, but MV is up 9%. No longer listed include 611 14th ($2.049M), 2158 La Mesa ($5.5M), and 1020 Palisades Beach Road ($10.55M) in SM, and 3653 Mountain View ($3.395M) in MV.

10/12 - SM inventory <$3M is up 5% for the week, PP <$2M is up 11% and MV is up 2%, with more price reductions. (Corrected - thanks, Dan; pesky Excel formula didn't survive inserting columns.)

10/5 - SM inventory <$3M is up 10% for the week, and the highest this year; PP <$2M is up 4%; MV is down 1%.

       LA County  Santa Monica  Pacific Palisades  Mar Vista
<$3M New Tot DOM<$2M New Tot DOM Tot New DOM

_________ _______________ _______________ ___________

1/30/06 27,732
2/28/06 29,420
3/31/06 31,819
4/21/06 33,054 35
5/ 1/06 34,032 38 33
6/ 2/06 37,847 56 36 38
6/30/06 42,317 66 40 49
8/ 4/06 45,315 70 34 50
9/ 1/06 46,781 71 27 59
10/ 6/06 47,369 83 25 98 71
11/ 3/06 45,780 80 20 91 77
12/ 1/06 43,103 65 18 72 96 39 20
1/ 5/07 35,646 54 4 60 117 33 6 71 66
2/ 2/07 36,715 38 15 45 124 29 16 61 71
3/ 2/07 41,251 42 14 51 114 26 10 68 79 53 25 76
4/ 6/07 42,857 41 23 49 107 18 8 73 103 52 52 50
5/ 4/07 45,918 46 28 54 92 19 6 82 79 68 37 52
6/ 1/07 52,198 50 25 61 78 17 15 87 78 77 39 53
6/30/07 52,769 42 18 56 81 17 11 92 77 74 33 61
8/ 3/07 54,166 53 28 68 86 23 12 78 76 84 39 68
8/31/07 57,432 57 21 72 98 18 7 69 75 90 40 79
9/28/07 59 17 74 103 26 9 90 81 87 20 87
10/ 5/07 58,973 65 8 81 98 27 2 95 85 86 6 87
10/12/07 58,918 69 13 85 102 30 5 103 64 88 13 87
10/19/07 59,029 66 16 81 105 26 6 96 70 96 21 87
10/26/07 63 18 80 105 25 6 97 76 100 29 87
11/ 2/07 58,731 62 19 81 120 29 7 106 77 98 35 88
11/ 9/07
All Westside

              2/9     4/6     6/1     8/3    9/28 
3/1 5/4 6/30 8/31 11/2

Bel Air-H.Hls. 86 86 92 100 103 99 86 99 104 104
Bev.Ctr.-M.M. 64 57 48 53 54 65 64 67 75 75
Beverly Hills 67 70 56 46 53 49 59 61 62 58
B.H. P.O. 94 91 92 88 93 95 92 94 90 93
B'wood Vic. 35 36 31 39 38 41 42 46 50 59
Brentwood 67 71 73 75 72 68 86 77 89 96
Chev.-R.Pk.'8' 22 20 19 22 23 22 26 20 28 23
Culver City 35 25 20 28 33 36 41 48 49 46
Malibu 178 181 192 199 206 220 224 216 216 209
Malibu Beach 42 44 51 52 56 58 54 45 43 45
Marina Del Rey 20 20 20 27 29 28 26 27 26 22
Pac.Palisades 64 68 73 82 87 92 78 69 90 106
Palms-M.Vista 62 53 52 68 77 73 84 90 87 98
Playa Del Rey 7 8 17 20 21 20 21 24 29 27
Playa Vista 3 2 3 1 3 5 4 9 8 10
Santa Monica 50 50 49 53 61 57 68 72 74 81
Sunset-Hwd.H. 155 178 159 166 180 168 187 184 215 226
Topanga 39 41 36 43 45 54 49 54 55 52
Venice 64 64 57 68 70 72 69 68 68 84
W.H'wood Vic. 23 32 25 36 42 41 40 36 49 52
West L.A. 19 21 25 24 25 34 31 36 40 37
Westchester 53 46 47 45 53 52 62 72 82 78
W'wood-C.City 33 44 37 42 33 34 29 37 42 50
____ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Total 1282 1274 1457 1522 1671
1308 1377 1483 1551 1731
Month-month incr. 2% -3% 8% 6% 2% 3% 2% 8% 4%

Notes

LA County inventory via OC Renter. Santa Monica Days on Market (DOM) is for <$3M, and omits Santa Monica Canyon (in City of Los Angeles but S.M. Post Office). Pacific Palisades DOM is for <$2M and count omits mobile homes. "New" is for previous month, or month-to-date for current partial month.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

This graph illustrates bluntly and clearly that Westside/SM is very different in terms of RE than the greater LA. Inventory is much lower than last year a complete opposite of the whole LA picture. It is striking and significant -no one can deny it. This is why the numbers relased for the LA area price drop of 5% do not mean much for the Westside/SM. It is just a different cycle-different city if fact. If greater LA prices go down it still can go up few percent here. Do not be surprised. It is shifting of relative values.

Unless there is a severe recesssion right here in high paying jobs. Only then it can possibly reverse. Do not hold your breath.

Anonymous said...

Oh, is that what it means? I thought it meant all the speculators / developers (realtors) bought all the houses last year and are having them worked on now.

I think we should start a list of all the places that are different, because oddly, everyone thinks they're in one.

San Diego was different. Orange County was different. Santa Barbara was different... Should I go on?

Anonymous said...

Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Hills, Bel Air, Westwood, Brentwood...

Anonymous said...

Santa Monica, Palisades, Malibu... Damn, maybe it'd be easier just to list the places that aren't different.

Anonymous said...

... um... Yep, that was easy.

Anonymous said...

Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Hills, Bel Air, Westwood, Brentwood...


Exactly - few top zip codes in LA. Not too many in a 10 million city. Believe in specultors if you want I don't. Inventory contrast is striking to say the least.

Westside Bubble said...

Anon, I notice about Santa Monica inventory that:

1. Listings were down in 2007 vs. 2006, but are catching up with this time last year;

2. Inventory is still rising, and could catch last year's in November;

3. Days on market was some 50% higher in 2007, reflecting more stuck inventory.

WarChestSM said...

These numbers seem to present a bullish picture. However, I would suggest stepping back for a moment and looking at just how "different" this year is from last year.

I have found multiple spec properties and flips (many of which are owned by real estate agents or mortgage brokers) which are languishing on the market and cutting prices to the point where losses are occurring.

It was hard to find examples of this happening even last year when the market was starting to deteriorate.

SM will always deserve a premium price tag and will always be "different" in some ways. However almost nothing is different enough to hold up against the power of the cycle.

If you don't believe me about all the specs taking losses, come look at my blog. I'm documenting it in real time so we can stop talking about what we think and start looking at what is happening with prices in real time.

Anonymous said...

Some speculators make take losses in stagnated market -that is obvious. You can take 30-40% loss in a market where 0% price change occurs - bought a bad house need to sell it fast etc. It does not change the fact that inventory patterns are very different for high and say 5-10% percentile of the LA -versus the rest. And therefore it is difficult to infer future price changes in these areas based on the overall patterns. That is all what I am saying.

Anonymous said...

I have to say....we have been waiting for things to soften in a big way on the westside for a while.
Bulls have the fact that things so far remain steady. Bears have a real general market downtrend that they believe has to drag the entire city down with it, westside and all. Time will tell.

Anonymous said...

Exactly -time will tell. Tracking it every day like this site attempts to is a little like tracking global warming by daily temperature changes. So take it easy it may be that in that average prices are slighlty lower or slighlty higher in 10 years compared to $ or gold or basket of international currencies. Time will tell -meanwhile life goes on.

Anonymous said...

I just love the argument that people who can afford 5mil don't care about
LOSING MONEY. Or paying more for something than their neighbors. Or paying 5 mil for something worth (or soon to be worth) 4... sure they may pay a bit more for ease, etc. But I know for a FACT the don't want/passionately hate to get screwed.

And when they don't buy the newly done houses, who's going to overpay for the teardowns?