December 2007 
There are 26 blog entries for December 2007.
Price Chops of the Year
Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 2:18am. 132 Views, 0 Comments.
It is looking like local home sales statistics for 2007 will show that the year was a bit slower than 2006, and definitely the slowest of this booming decade.
With the slowing market you see more and more cases of sellers – and agents, their advisers – getting list prices wrong. Sometimes, those beginning wish prices were quite far off from true market value.
Here are the biggest chops we’ve seen in Manhattan Beach in 2007. Keep in mind, these are cuts by folks who have actually made deals – bigger cuts may be on the horizon as other sellers get out of denial.
Hill Section
Top Chop: 108 S Dianthus (pictured), -$1.25m. This large (4br/6ba, 4550 sq. ft.), modern remodel with big ocean views was first offered in March 2006 at $4.5m. Thirteen months later, it…
With the slowing market you see more and more cases of sellers – and agents, their advisers – getting list prices wrong. Sometimes, those beginning wish prices were quite far off from true market value.
Here are the biggest chops we’ve seen in Manhattan Beach in 2007. Keep in mind, these are cuts by folks who have actually made deals – bigger cuts may be on the horizon as other sellers get out of denial.
Hill Section
Top Chop: 108 S Dianthus (pictured), -$1.25m. This large (4br/6ba, 4550 sq. ft.), modern remodel with big ocean views was first offered in March 2006 at $4.5m. Thirteen months later, it…Shadow Inventory
Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 4:36am. 145 Views, 0 Comments.
As we've mentioned from time to time, the holiday season is so slow, agents will often advise sellers to drop out a while if they can.Maybe take some of that time to attend to issues you know your home has (or that you have) so you can come back on the market fresh and new later.
If you take your home off the MLS for 60 days or more, you can even pull a legit re-list, re-starting the DOM clock with no one carping about how you're trying to mislead potential buyers.
MBC has done a quick analysis of homes that canceled off the MLS in the last 6-8 weeks, partly to gauge how much shadow inventory we might have.
We'll look at 22 canceled (or expired) listings and opine about each listing's relative likelihood to return to the market in 2008. We use a scale of 1-5,…
Success Selling Excess
Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 4:15am. 106 Views, 0 Comments.
Since mid-May, we've seen 6 Tree Section homes listed on the MLS sell for $3m+, with 2 more sold privately and reported for comps.As we end the year, it looks like we have one more to add – 613 15th St., now in escrow after about 3 months on the market.
If you've been up near the top of American Martyrs Hill in the past year-plus, you've seen three neighboring lots that got snapped up, scraped and adorned with new Caliterraneans. All were sold for about $4.2m.
Here were the lot sale prices:
- 604 15th, sold 8/06, $2.020
- 608 15th, sold 2/06, $1.975m
- 613 15th, sold 5/06, $1.950m
613 was the outlier in a…
Mrs. MBC's Xmas List
Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 2:56am. 108 Views, 0 Comments.
Shopping? Browsing? Looking to upgrade? It's that time of year!
At MBC, if we were inclined to shake everything up a lot and try to grant all of Mrs. MBC's wishes, we might consider (click hyperlinked addresses for details via Redfin):
At MBC, if we were inclined to shake everything up a lot and try to grant all of Mrs. MBC's wishes, we might consider (click hyperlinked addresses for details via Redfin):
- New home: 516 24th (Sand Section) (pictured) – a true "beach house" with a cohesive style and smart family layout; draws in light beautifully; surprising treetop views to boot;
- Resale home: 916 9th (Hill Section) – a recently canceled listing (maybe to return); still one of our favorites for its vast great room/back yard combo; we could probably get over some 80s oddities for the right price (click here for MBC's story from October);
- Major rebuild: 408 6th (Sand Section) – nothing wrong with this mid-block, walkstreet
Last-Minute Lot Shopping
Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 at 3:46am. 128 Views, 0 Comments.
If you're late finding the perfect gift, you might want to check out 3009 Poinsettia (click for details via Redfin).It's a teardown on a great Tree Section lot on a block that MBC admired this past Summer (see "The Street Where Listings Don't Last") – a cute little oasis between Valley and 31st. The sellers request $1.399m for the lot.
3009 is the neighbor of three homes that sold this year for $2.5m or so (3005: $2.525m, 3001: $2.49m and 2805: $2.549m). It's one door off the corner with 31st.
The timing of the listing is bizarre – who starts Dec. 21?
And the one photo is so dreadful you'd almost think this block is much less cool than it is. (Well, the charms of deciduous trees are less apparent in Winter.)
But put those things aside and work out a price…
Open Thread to Discuss 'Go Pro, Or No?'
Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 2:50am. 131 Views, 0 Comments.
As some readers know, MBC now has a weekly column in the Easy Reader.
The first few columns cribbed from blog content. Now we're reversing the flow.
Below is the text of this week's all-new column and a link to the Easy Reader site. FYI, if you read the story there, the ER online provides an easy-to-use letter-to-the-editor form.
The comments here are an open thread to discuss and debate. Here's the column:
The changing local real estate market is opening up a new debate over the value of using a full-service real estate agent in a home transaction.
Your humble correspondent has had satisfactory experiences working with Realtors. At the same time, there’s a lot of discussion on the blog at MBconfidential.com that draws out the questions of what, exactly, an…
The first few columns cribbed from blog content. Now we're reversing the flow.
Below is the text of this week's all-new column and a link to the Easy Reader site. FYI, if you read the story there, the ER online provides an easy-to-use letter-to-the-editor form.
The comments here are an open thread to discuss and debate. Here's the column:
The changing local real estate market is opening up a new debate over the value of using a full-service real estate agent in a home transaction.
Your humble correspondent has had satisfactory experiences working with Realtors. At the same time, there’s a lot of discussion on the blog at MBconfidential.com that draws out the questions of what, exactly, an…
MB Market Update for 12/15/07
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 4:22pm. 130 Views, 0 Comments.
The new MB Market Update spreadsheets are available for download by clicking here, or by using the link at the upper-right corner of the main MBC page. Information in this update closed Dec. 15. This and older updates are archived at our data-dump/sister site here.
Total SFR inventory west of Sepulveda was at 70 on Dec. 15, -3 from the start of the month, in part due to 6 cancellations. Upon publishing this update, we note that inventory has dropped further to 65.
There were 5 sales (new escrows) in the first half of the month among SFRs listed on the MLS. (In our subject region west of Sepulveda.) One was a big-dollar sale of new construction in the Hill Section, one was a lot sale in the Sand Section and the remaining 3 were lower-priced homes in the…
Total SFR inventory west of Sepulveda was at 70 on Dec. 15, -3 from the start of the month, in part due to 6 cancellations. Upon publishing this update, we note that inventory has dropped further to 65.
There were 5 sales (new escrows) in the first half of the month among SFRs listed on the MLS. (In our subject region west of Sepulveda.) One was a big-dollar sale of new construction in the Hill Section, one was a lot sale in the Sand Section and the remaining 3 were lower-priced homes in the…
The Guru Wants to Try Gov't Green
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 7:20am. 94 Views, 0 Comments.
Do you remember those days when every utterance of Alan Greenspan was eagerly anticipated, carefully parsed and highly influential?He does. And the growing sense that the Guru made some mistakes is only increasing his desire to talk. (See Monday's NYT on his indifference to warnings on the subprime crisis.)
These days, he's got his book, he's courting press coverage and he's doing sit-down interviews on TV. (Bonus question: Do you remember Jon Stewart? The Guru sat with him before darkness set in.)
In his most recent interview (on ABC's "This Week"), he tilted to the left of the mainstream debate on how to fix the mortgage mess, advocating some kind of government-funded bailout (er, assistance) to troubled borrowers. As the NYT summarized the Guru's remarks:
…
Fireworks
Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 6:32am. 240 Views, 0 Comments.
If it's Christmastime, that means it's time to blow stuff up!Seriously, xmas fireworks are a great local tradition. Downtown's fun, but this year found MBC down at the South End on the Strand, where this is even more of an event than maybe we realized. (Valet parking!?!)
The show was quite good this year; we overheard folks saying it was "the best ever," and who are we to be contrary?
Now, it turns out MB didn't think this tradition up. All over the world, people shoot off fireworks around this time of year. Hey, not everyone celebrates July 4th, for some reason. You've got these in the UK, in the Dominican, in El Salvador... the list goes on.
MBC does not know precisely how this got started in MB, and we would love additional insights.
If you'd like something…
Winner of the Race to $2.1m
Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 7:00am. 131 Views, 0 Comments.
If you've got to sell, one theory is that you've got to move the price enough to convince buyers you're flexible. Certainly, 2807 Elm did that.The movement on Elm, a new home that only entered our glutted $2m+ segment in the Tree Section in late June, was stunning. It went from dramatically overpriced at $2.899m, down, down, down in $100k chunks, to $2.299m.
Now it has closed escrow at $2,100,000, fully $799k down (-28%) from start, an extra $199k off the last (reduced) list price.
This officialy makes 2807 Elm a winner of the "race" toward prices around $2.1m we saw developing in October (see "The Race to $2.1m, and Then...") – noteworthy at the time because previous clustering of comparable listings had been around $2.3m instead.
Man, did they unload this…
