All Blog Entries by Dave Fratello

We posed a question earlier in the month and wanted to come back to it.

The question was whether the Manhattan Beach real estate market is currently "top heavy," possibly featuring more high-priced listings than demand can absorb. (See "Top Heavy? More Than 1/3rd of MB Listings Are $4M"," May 7.)

At the time, we cut the market into sub-$4M and over-$4M tiers, finding that 36% of active listings were priced in that upper tier.

Wasn't it curious, though, that in 2018, only 15% of sales had closed over $4M?

This was a hint that supply might be out of line with demand in 2019, but we were careful to say that we needed another look at the numbers.

With a new data run, we find something illuminating: Higher-end inventory seems to often swell…

You may be snooping this weekend, one way or another - to raise funds, or just to see some homes, or both. (Click this link if you still need tickets and a schedule to the Sophisticated Snoop).

Free to see there are plenty of new listings all around MB, including new construction in East Manhattan.

Our video features several new listings, including 1320 9th, 709 Larsson and more:

Email subscribers may need to use this link to view the video.

We'll have our Edge listing of 508 Larsson open Sunday 2-4pm, so try to stop by!

To plan your open-house tours for this week, use MB Confidential's online list of Manhattan Beach open houses (it's mobile-friendly!). Our open house link always appears in our weekly wrapups and on the main front

Inventory is up from 100 this time last year to 123 listings, so that's a percentage of... oooh, oooh, I know this one! 23%.

There were more listings than 2018 had on May 15 in prior years: 109 in 2017, 111 in 2016. But this year is still marking out a new, recent high.

It's been like this much of the year, a little boost over 2018 but nothing very dramatic.

One way housing economists try to make sense of inventory levels is to look at demand versus supply, a metric known as "Months Supply." (We prefer "months of supply.")

The measure takes into account the number of homes going into escrow and estimates how long it would take to sell everything in the market.

Where do we stand there?

As of late April, Manhattan Beach was sitting at 3.4…

Someone, one of these days, is going to break $4M for a new home in East Manhattan Beach.

With the entry of 1320 9th (6br/7ba, 4900 sqft.) onto the market now, the chances go up again for that $4M mark to be breached sooner, rather than later.

This "Transitional Modern Farm House" begins by asking $4.250M, $51K above a competing listing.

1643 8th (5br/6ba, 4835 sqft.) had begun at $4.199M in early April, and actually had a deal briefly. (It was back out of escrow within 2 days.)

Meantime, 1755 8th (5br/7ba, 4835 sqft.) canceled 2 weeks ago after trying for 5+ months at $4.950M. (Really).

UPDATE: Soon after this post went live, 1755 8th returned with a new agent at $4.550M.

And a construction site known as 1515 Gates (5br/7ba, 7100 sqft.)