I hope all of you had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend relaxing and honoring our military service members who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
For this week’s blog, I am covering two short topics:
- Macro-data beyond the South Bay for some valuable home market perspective, and
- A notable sale in Redondo Beach.
Large Macro Data for Market Perspective
Sometimes it is easy to purely focus on the South Bay home market exclusively. And while this focus is paramount for our blog, it does make sense to step back at times and study larger macro numbers for perspective.
So, with that said, let’s look at the larger CRMLS numbers in Southern California pre-pandemic, height of the pandemic market, and post pandemic today:
Active Listings
2019: 101,000
2022: 53,000
2024: 38,000
This is quite amazing seeing just how constrained the current homes for sale inventory really is. If you thought the housing market had low supply during the Covid housing fervor, it is even worse today throughout Southern California.
Months of Supply
2019: 4.8
2022: 2.1
2024: 2.4
While the low supply is historically low, months’ supply is slightly more encouraging. This is partly because there are fewer pending escrows and sales which affect this number calculation, which is essentially just fewer transactions being done thanks to homeowners keeping their low interest rates and more buyers leaving the market due to unaffordability.
Percentage of Original Price
2019: 98.9%
2022: 102.3%
2024: 100%
Buyers had a lot more leverage to negotiate price lower in 2019. As you can see, it was a free-for-all during the pandemic with seemingly every listing going over asking, and then today with full asking price being achieved regularly.
Closed Sales
2019: 247,000
2022: 312,000
2024: 184,000
And lastly, closed sales really show the story of low inventory and ultra-low transactions. Fewer transactions create less tax revenues for governments, a tough environment for real estate services like moving companies & furniture outlets, escrow/title/staging/etc., and of course, Realtors…but do not feel bad for us as many of these businesses had wonderful years in 2021 and 2022.
I hope the above numbers are interesting and helpful to you.
Notable Redondo Beach “Tall and Skinny”
There are always notable sales to cover each week, and many more to highlight beyond the the sale below…but then all I would do is write rather than also serve clients in their South Bay real estate pursuits.
Let’s jump into this week’s highlighted sale…
Redondo Beach
The notable sale is a “tall & skinny” in Redondo’s Golden Hill submarket.
1721 Goodman Avenue
3-beds, 3-baths, 1,899 sq. ft.
SOLD: $1,800,000
Now, Golden Hills has seen much higher “tall & skinny” sales with new construction options. What is important about this sale is that it’s an existing home that was built in 1987…which achieved a significantly high price for the market.
We did not see any existing “tall & skinny” sales in the $1.8 million range in 2023. And there were three sales in 2022 in the $1.8M range (along with a $2.225M sale) and was the top of the market as interest rates began to rise.
With this new price hit after a significant rise in mortgage borrowing rates, it shows the strength of Golden Hills which has seen just incredible price growth for over a decade now. With this result, Golden Hills seems to have recovered from any weakness thanks to 20-year-high mortgage rates.
Simply amazing.
Final Wrap-Up
I hope the macro data and notable sale were valuable pieces of information to you. Next week we will have the May data in and a large glimpse into the second quarter numbers before the market’s summer slowdown in July.
See you on the next blog.
Richard Haynes
DRE: 01779425
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The Richard Haynes Real Estate ShowA leader in South Bay real estate for the better part of a decade, Richard thrives as an advisor to his clients with over $248 million in sales as a broker or investment principal at his boutique agency, Haynes. Richard is known for his keen local market insights which have been featured in the L.A. Times, The Street, and Forbes, along with his weekly South Bay real estate blog. [read more]