Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Inside Job



Finally saw the documentary Inside Job. Whew! Unlike the typical movie drama, this is about reality and there's no hero to win over evil in the end. The elites prevailed. Duh!

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

October Inventory, Sold, New

I've been continuing to capture numbers, but haven't gotten to posting in awhile. So here is the update for the end of October. The short version is that Santa Monica and Westside inventory numbers may be high enough, and the economy weak enough, to follow the path of two years ago (late 2008 into spring 2009) that brought the 20%+ drop in Santa Monica benchmark prices. You see that in the high inventory and low sales turquoise bars in the first half of the year. We'll see.






All Westside

                 1/29     4/2    5/30     8/1    10/3   11/26
2/26 4/30 7/3 9/3 10/31 12/31


Bel Air-Holmby H. 91 99 109 111 111 131 133 119 116 121
Beverly Ctr.-M.M. 58 66 75 74 91 92 88 79 81 78
Beverly Hills 96 115 103 117 118 124 126 106 118 130
B.Hills P.O. 127 126 124 136 142 137 138 139 128 132
Beverlywood Vic. 31 34 36 41 50 57 57 61 60 59
Brentwood 102 115 113 129 137 127 134 125 144 131
Cheviot-R.Park '8' 21 18 20 28 27 34 31 28 33 25
Culver City 30 36 35 36 39 39 53 49 53 39
Malibu 209 215 211 226 231 242 233 237 230 226
Malibu Beach 75 70 72 76 72 84 87 84 78 78
Marina Del Rey 27 31 26 28 27 25 28 23 22 17
Pacific Palisades 106 107 122 148 148 134 140 136 142 136
Palms-Mar Vista 58 65 67 88 91 77 87 91 90 84
Playa Del Rey 14 13 17 25 23 23 29 33 33 29
Playa Vista 4 3 4 4 4 5 7 7 5 3
Santa Monica 68 74 79 87 88 81 88 88 81 90
Sunset-Hwd.Hills 214 228 231 246 259 267 278 274 283 276
Topanga 53 66 69 71 71 68 72 61 61 62
Venice 61 66 80 75 81 90 98 93 93 97
W.Hollywood Vic. 37 36 25 32 36 42 47 46 54 56
West L.A. 12 17 21 21 23 26 33 55 62 61
Westchester 49 47 48 56 58 70 70 77 79 72
Westwood-Cent.City 42 44 58 55 71 63 72 53 48 60
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

2010 Totals 1585 1745 1998 2129 2094
1691 1910 2038 2064 2062
2009 Totals 2027 2281 2196 2233 2034 1827
2205 2262 2160 2133 1979 1486
2008 Totals 1509 1694 1917 2019 2006 2128
1524 1846 1974 1942 2085 1822
2007 Totals 1282 1274 1457 1522 1671 1600
1308 1377 1483 1551 1731 1329
See 2007, 2008, and 2009 monthly totals. Santa Monica here omits Santa Monica Canyon (in City of Los Angeles but S.M. Post Office).

S&P/Case-Shiller (August) and DataQuick (September)

Last week's August 2010 S&P/Case-Shiller appears to represent a peak and beginning of a decline in both Los Angeles and the 10-city Composite, now down 35.7% from its September 2006 peak, at December 2003 levels. The national (orange line, their original 10-city Composite) index is down 28.3% from its peak in June 2006. The Low, Middle, and High tiers are also graphed. The left column on the chart is peak to bottom; the right is peak to current month.

The DataQuick numbers for September also appear to show a downtrend for the four counties. Los Angeles County's median was at $340K, down 38.2% from its peak in August 2007. That left Los Angeles County at November 2003, Orange County prices at October 2003, Ventura County at April 2003, and San Diego County at July 2002.


Finally, here is the updated Los Angeles Case-Shiller index scaled with the Los Angeles DataQuick median price history (normalized Case-Shiller's January 2000 = 100). The Case-Shiller data is a month older and a three-month average.

Also see Calculated Risk on the CoreLogic 1.5% year-year price decline for August.