All Blog Entries by Dave Fratello

It looks like sellers are going to make their moves a bit early this year in Manhattan Beach.

In just a week, we've seen inventory go from the low 70s to the mid-80s.

From Thursday, Jan. 3-Thurs. Jan. 10, there were 14 new real estate listings in Manhattan Beach. (It's true, 2 of those 14 did have some market exposure also in 2018.)

Out of the dozen truly new listings, 8 emerged on Thursday. (One was this 2000-built Mediterranean at 700 36th in the Tree Section, starting Thurs. at $2.799M.)

Who's gonna wait for February to list?

Not everyone.

As we post to the blog here early on Friday, inventory is at 85 listings in Manhattan Beach.

That inventory level was not hit until mid-March in 2018. (See a 6-year inventory chart in our MB…

In a sign of a calmer market overall, the median price for Manhattan Beach homes rose 2% to a record-high $2,400,000 in 2018.

The jump, by $51K, in the median price is greater than the increase from 2015-2016, which was just under 1% ($2.060M to $2.075M).

But 2% doesn't hold a candle to 2017's extraordinary rise of 13% year-over-year. (We called it "a head-snapping jump" in this discussion of the 2017 median price [Jan. 2018].)

You could say that 2018 built on the foundation set by 2017 sales.

As if to underscore that $2.400M really was the median price, there were 7 homes sold at that price, and 3 more within $15K. (Pictured is one of those $2.400M sales, 1713 Pacific in the Tree Section.)

This means that 2018 was the 4th year in a row…

Buyers for Manhattan Beach real estate were more picky and reluctant to act in the 4th quarter of 2018.

As a result, the city just posted its slowest quarter for new escrows since the last 3 months of 2008.

As you may recall, the financial markets were in free fall in late 2008. So that's an awkward comparison.

Late in 2018, there was no obvious crisis in the financial world, though maybe some storm clouds were forming. Several stock market measures ended the year down by 4-6% for all of 2018, largely due to a challenging Q4.

But it wasn't such market upheaval that would explain why Manhattan Beach real estate listings weren't finding buyers.

Before we ask why this happened, let's start with what the data show today.

First, as we…

Let's just ease into this new year.

Just one new listing is holding open houses this weekend. It's new construction in the Trees.

There are 17 more longer-term listings also looking for your attentino.

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 page, under "Open Houses."

Below, click any address link to view all photos and property details. And don't forget, when previewing homes here on MB Confidential, you can click "Open All Images" right above the main listing photo to get immediate display of all the listing photos at once. 

Listings appearing here come from the whole…