East MB

You probably know that short-term rentals have been effectively banned in Manhattan Beach.

But what about short-term ownership? Not regulated yet.

Some recent listings have come to market after being acquired not-so-very-long-ago. You have to wonder: What changed? (We don't make it this blog's business to dive into the personal stories, even when we do hear.)

A recent closed sale at 1313 Pine (pictured) was a moderate success story. The 5br/4ba, 3260 sqft. home was purchased early last year while it was being framed out as a spec home. The buyer just couldn't let it go to someone else, so they paid $3.290M in Jan. 2015. 

This year, they offered it back on the public market for $3.499M, but found that the market wasn't quite there.

The sale at $3.345M

Maybe we are in for a long Summer.

Inventory hit 129 on Tuesday, just another new high, but people are still bringing homes to market looking to sell.

This, while we enter a season that is typically heavy with tourists but lighter with buyers. That's just Summer for you.

So how will you sell in this environment?

Pricing and patience.

And if you need to, cuts. (Fixing the pricing if the market doesn't respond.)

A word to the wise: If you don't sell at once, and start cutting, buyers who do come are in a mood to negotiate further still. That's how the wind's blowing.

Here's a partial list of recent price cuts (pictured here is 527 14th, noted below) :

Hill Section 

934 Duncan (5br/5ba, 4050 sqft.) (pictured) is a custom early-90s home with updates

For quite a while there, all that we had to report from the "new construction in Liberty Village" front was: It's not selling.

"It" was 1304 Lynngrove (5br/6ba, 3750 sqft.), a high-gloss, ultramodern new home improbably placed in Manhattan Beach's own Mayberry-by-the-sea ("by-the-park?"), Liberty Village.

The LV is often the definition of an entry-level neighborhood for MB, with the lowest prices in town. Find out what a house on Aviation-adjacent Wendy Way is selling for, and you may well know where the first rung on the MB ladder is.

So to see this Hollywood-caliber new home pop up amid the 1950s cottages in this otherwise modest neighborhood was jarring. The initial $3.199M asking price was even more so. (With some appreciation for the "boldness" and…

Looking at a couple of recent sales, East Manhattan values seem to be holding up pretty well, despite burgeoning inventory citywide.

Look at 1160 9th (5br/4ba, 4200 sqft.), a 90s Mediterranean with modest upgrades on a corner lot.

You get more for the money in East Manhattan, and this one proves the rule: $2.455M and $585/PSF. (Lot size for this one is just shy of 6000 sqft.

And there was a comparably sized 2002 Mediterranean at 1430 21st (5br/6ba, 3900 sqft.) on a full-sized (7500 sqft.) lot that sold in this period for $2.660M and $684/PSF.

We count 9 basically similar sales in all of 2015: Homes of 90s or early-2000s vintage, 4-6br, around 4000 sqft. +/- a few hundred sqft., mostly on 7500 sqft. lots. All of those sales last year between