Look Who's Back on The Strand

By Dave Fratello | August 30th, 2018

From your living room back to the MLS, it's 108 The Strand, now returning to market,

This custom modern tower of fabulousness now begins its 7th listing since February 2016, with its lowest price yet: $16.995M.

You know how they say the third time is the charm? It's kind of the same here, it just takes longer on The Strand.

Now, we're going to have to refresh the definition of "listing" for this to be the 7th.

Since 108 The Strand was just on the market earlier Thursday at $17.995M, today's late-morning listing is more like what we prefer to call a "bogus re-list," meant to reset the DOM clock and not to reflect a change in agents, for instance. (True to form, this bogus re-list does come along with a $1M price cut.)

The new price per square foot is notable: $2,459/PSF.

That's because in the made-for-TV version of the listing agents' original pricing discussion, one agent suggested "we should keep it closer to 2700 a foot," to "undercut the competition."

The other listing agent dismissed that notion with a curse word, saying, "The house next door sold for over 3000 a foot. I’m simply asking for 2800 a foot. I don’t think that’s unreasonable."

(We recounted some of the TV action and pricing discussion back in January here, in "Strand Re-List Down $2.5M, Below TV Show Estimate.")

That's how they decided to come out at $19.995M in 2016-17, before gradual cuts got it to $17.500M in early 2018 and a "new listing" raised the price again to $17.995M in early August.

At $2,459/PSF, 108 The Strand does, in fact, "undercut" all the competition on The Strand today.

Now, if we go all the way back to the time when this property first listed in early 2016, there are 8 Strand sales since then.

There's almost no real comp in that span, other than the next-door neighbor at 104 The Strand (5br/8ba, 6125 sqft.) that sold in early 2016 at $18.400M. (This was the one at "3000 a foot" referenced by the agent pushing a higher start price.)

Included among the 8 sales are 4 land-value sales and a half-lot sale (622 The Strand). One land-value sale, on the corner at 2400 The Strand ($11.900M, Aug. 2017), was removed from the MLS feed after selling (boo!), but you can see the rest below.

So you can guess at the frustration behind the scenes on this listing. Strand properties trade rarely, with big numbers attached, and who wants to leave $1M or more on the table if they don't have to? But why isn't it selling? Who's responsible?

What they need to do now is shoot a new episode of the TV show to draw back the curtain on the discussions among a (hypothetically) fuming-mad seller, with the listing office boss and out-of-area TV agents explaining what they see as the current reality of the Manhattan Beach Strand and Strand-adjacent market.

That ep can end with everyone agreeing on a $1M price cut and a bogus re-list. Voila!

Wouldn't that be educational TV?