Monday, September 1, 2008

Venice canals

I was walking along the Venice Canals a few days ago, which led to wondering, 'what do these houses cost?' Of course, a bubble blogger doesn't stop with a short answer! So here are the current canal-front listings, all sales (via the County Assessor) in the last two years, and adjacent sales on blocks to the south and east.

The summary is a low end bungalow is $1.4-1.5M, and a high-end McMansion is a little over $3M. Here are the nine current listings - which seem a lot compared with only sixteen sales in the last two years.

226 Carroll Canal, 3 bed/2.5 bath, LP=$1,995K, LD=8/29/08
430 Linnie Canal, 3/2.5, $2,299K, 8/8/08
2919 Grand Canal, 3/3, $2,299K, 7/3/08
2605 Grand Canal, 4/3.5, $2,590K (-8%), 5/23/08
213 Sherman Canal, 3/3, $2,595K, (-6%), 6/18/08
2722 Strongs Dr, 3/2.75, $2,697K, 5/28/08
2217 Grand Canal, 4/3.5, $2,997K, 5/4/08
457 Howland Canal, 4/4, $3,150K, 3/10/08
444 Howland Canal, 4/4.5, $3,400K, 7/9/08

Here are sales on the canals in the last two years (colored rectangles on the map above):

2333 Grand Canal, SD=12/15/06, SP=$1,300K, 2,319 SF, built 1964, 3 bed/4 bath
427 Carroll Canal, 5/2/07, $1,400K, 416, 1954, 1/1
425 Carroll Canal, 5/2/07, $1,450K, 1,302, 1924, 3/2
225 Howland Canal, 1/12/07, $1,487K, 1,482, 1930, 5/2
230x Grand Canal, 10/30/07, $1,525K, vacant lot
2509 Eastern Canal, 8/31/06, $1,600K, 1,539, 1978, 2/2
2409 Strongs Dr, 5/24/07, $1,850K, 1,750, 1978, 2/3
2608 Strongs Dr, 7/14/08, $1,863K, 2,248, 1987, 3/2
214 Howland Canal, 8/21/07, $1,985K, 1,648, 1979, 3/3
438 Sherman Canal, 3/9/07, $2,200K, 2,354, 1980, 3/3
2415 Eastern Canal, 3/4/08, $2,625K, 2,826, 1983, 1/3
241 Carroll Canal, 4/1/08, $2,700K, 3,467, 1979, 5/4
402 Howland Canal, 4/19/07, $2,850K, 3,644, 2002, 3/4
2335 Eastern Canal, 5/5/08, $2,950K, 3,296, 1991, 2/2
211 Sherman Canal, 7/18/08, $3,062K, 1,818, 1956, 3/3
2407 Eastern Canal, 10/25/07, $3,280K, 2,488, 1998, 4/3

How much do prices drop near but not on the canals? These are south of the canals, north of Washington:

547 28th Ave, 2/27/07, $955K, 943, 1943, 2/1
449 28th Ave, 1/10/07, $1,120K, n/a
509 28th Ave, 5/20/08, $1,650K, 1,061, 1948, 2/2
2924 Clune Ave, 6/24/08, $1,950K, 2,420, 1984, 4/4
2908 Clune Ave, 4/11/07, $2,340K, n/a

And these are on the first four streets east of Ocean Ave. (map above):

2317 Clement Ave, 7/16/08, $900K, 860, 1955, 2/1
2342 Frey Ave, 1/14/08, $950K, 1,012, 1954, 2/1
2424 Clark Ave, 9/28/06, $1,080K, 1,084, 1954, 2/1
2432 Clark Ave, 9/22/06, $1,103K, 1,718, 1957, 4/2
2321 Frey Ave, 6/5/08, $1,299K, 1,074, 1971, 3/2
2314 McKinley Ave, 11/16/07, $1,365K, 1,280, 1954, 2/2
2338 Frey Ave, 2/27/08, $1,400K, 1,358, 1960, 2/2
2337 Clark Ave, 4/3/08, $1,500K, 1,378, 1963, 3/2
2325 Clark Ave, 7/3/08, $1,800K, 2,280, 1982, 3/3
2425 Clement Ave, 1/9/08, $2,140K, 1,054, 1951, 2/1
2329 Clement Ave, 12/14/07, $2,350K, 3,229, 1965, 2/3
2325 McKinley Ave, 11/30/06, $2,375K, 3,114, 2005, 3/3

Note: I don't believe the year-built and size data for some new houses, and presume they haven't been updated yet.

17 comments:

Dan said...

I haven't collected detailed data, but I looked ~18 months ago, and nothing in the canals seemed to be under $2.2, so I suspect there's been a small but real drop. I'd be interested if someone had data.

Anonymous said...

Love the canals. I was looking at a corner lot home on the the sunny side. It had so much canal frontage. My target for it was about $2,000,000, but it never got there and someone snatched it up.

There's always Westlake Village, which is the Canal's evil twin.

Anonymous said...

$2 million+ for a "waterfront" property with distgustingly dirty water and dinky lots. Sign me up!

Anonymous said...

I agree with anon. No way these are worth $2m+. Be patient, these are going down 80%.

Rational Renter said...

So, are my eyes deceiving me, or are these people charge premiums above 2006/2007 peak prices? Good luck!

Anonymous said...

why is westlake village the canal's evil twin

explain the joke to me

Anonymous said...

Westlake homes are built in similar arrangement - only the lake is manmade and it's in the valley. Still, it's a nice part of town over there. A lot of celebs live on the Westlake for some reason.

Anonymous said...

Can we delete the posts of the idiot who keeps posting here and on SM Distress about 80%? He's trolling and it's incredibly annoying to everyone. Better yet if we can ban his IP address so he can't post here any more.

Anonymous said...

I rent a house on the canals, and since I moved in at the beginning of the year, I've seen exactly one house actually sell. And more keep coming up on the market. The asking prices are too high right now, most of the houses are just sitting up for sale in perpetuity. I'm renting for half of what my mortgage payment would be for the lot alone. Huge disconnect. It's not going to drop 80%, that's silly, but I wouldn't be surprised to see asking prices drop 20-25%.

anil bhushan said...

Glad to see Venice discussed here. Canals and Walk streets are best areas and where prices drops have been minimal so far.

Anonymous said...

i personally prefer venice

but i can understand why others would prefer westlake village

if you have toddlers in venice you run the risk of them seeing some unpleasant things

Tom said...

Some perspective for what it's worth:

In late 1997 there were many vacant lots on the canals, all about the same size, for sale. They routinely were listed at $325,000 and sold for $300,000. So there has been about a 5X increase in 11 years for the land only. I bought a larger vacant lot in OP in early 1998 for $239,000 and that would go for less than 4X that now,if it were still vacant. You can see what a strong location the canals are.

Anonymous said...

i agree completely with the previous poster -

vacant land in the 90402 is up only about 3x from 1997 to today

and vacant land on the canals of venice is up 4 or 5 times since then

the greatest returns in real estate do NOT come from buying land in a place everyone already knows is good (like the 90402 in 1997)

the best returns come from figuring out which area is today considered a dangerous dirty unpleasant place that will CHANGE to being considered good in the future.

some folks i know bought a few burned out shells in harlem in mid 1990's and have made eight times their money (haven't sold yet however)

same phenom in Venice - the canals were considered to be unsafe and unpleasant in 1997 and shifted to being "cool" today - giving the people who bought a four or five bagger.

IF you have the skill to predict the areas that are today considered terrible that will in ten years be trendy, and you buy, you will get very rich.

Needless to say, this is a skill that very few people have and if you guess wrong you can and will loose.

in any event, it is not productive to kick yourself for missing out on buying in venice in 1997 but rather to think about whether you can predict the next home run

Anonymous said...

Problem with Venice and the canals is the schools and infastructure. You have LAUSD and LA city services....

Anonymous said...

I *never* would have been able to predict the run up real estate values around the venice canals. I mean the public schools are very dangerous and there are plenty of violent crimes right around the canals. look at the la police web site

truly astounding to me that the "hipster crowd" loves this area enough to pay 1.5 million for a scrap of land

but there you go - they pay

Anonymous said...

hipster / trendy people do manage to have the 1.5 million to drop on a piece of land

where the heck do they get it ?

seems like plenty of them

Anonymous said...

I just bought a 2700 sq ft house in Palos Verdes (10min from the 110Frwy), that has unbelievable City, Harbor and Ocean Views on over 1/2 usable acre. I am willing to fix it up/ customize it for a renter.
#1)How do I pick the rent that I can charge for it?
#2)How do I find a good renter?