Quit? List? Plus, Median Sanity – Manhattan Beach Market Update for 11/15/25

If you haven't sold by mid-November, take a break. 

That advice was given all over Manhattan Beach recently, and 10 sellers took it. 

Ten listings expired or were canceled between Oct. 31-Nov. 15. 

The median Days Active on MLS for those: 138. (Low: 60 days, High: 252.)

Not coincidentally, inventory of homes for sale dropped by 10 during this same period. 

That means the flow of incoming new listings matched up with the number of properties going into escrow.

So, everyone's packing it in for the holidays, eh? 

Not really. With a few new listings in recent days, as we write here on Nov. 18, there have been 15 new listings already in November.

What a time to start! After all those others had quit! 

Feeling lucky, maybe?

Median Price Sanity, Please

We hate to beat a dead horse – we're not violent by nature, especially with horses – but there's a topic we just have to return to for a moment. 

When you're talking about median home prices in a relatively small market, like Manhattan Beach, do not talk about monthly data.

We see flyers, mailers and online "market reports" all the time that local brokers create and share which use monthly data. No no no. 

For October 2025, they were saying the median home price was $3.625M. That's based on one month.

In reality, the median price based on a rolling 12-month set of data was $3.350M.  

This chart shows in dark blue the local median home price, using a 12-month set of data, calculated each month. 

The light blue, which fluctuates wildly, is based on a series of one-month sets of data.

For October 2025, there were only 26 sales that formed the basis for the reported "monthly" median price. Meantime, 324 sales were used to calculate the annualized figure. Which is more reliable?

Some absurdities ensue when you use the monthly figure.

This year's purported $3.625M appears to be a decline by $200K from October 2024. Time to panic?

No! Because based on the annualized number, the median price is up $450K from $2.900M year before.

The story of this year is more one of stability in prices, after a $100K increase within January. 

But if you were looking at the monthly figures, there's been fluctuation of up to $1M or more. 

This should be Statistics 101. 

Our view is that every agent is responsible for filtering the data they see to tell a story about the market. They should have their eyes open enough to call it out when their brokers or data vendors send them data that are misleading. 

Or if you just want to sacrifice your credibility by using goofed up data, go ahead.

It creates space for those of us who won't do that. 

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Here's the rest of our local real estate market update report for the period ending 11/15/25:

> 55 active listings as of 11/15/25 (-10 from 10/31/25) 

> 41 SFRs (-6)

> 14 THs (-4)

See the Inventory list as of 11/15/25 here, or see the MB Dashboard for up-to-the-minute data.

Active listings by region of Manhattan Beach in this report:

> Tree Section: 10 actives (-3)

> Sand Section: 23 actives (-10)

> Hill Section: 6 actives (+1)

> East MB: 16 actives (+2)

We're also providing a report on closed sales by region of MB.

Sales data, including PPSF for all properties, are organized by sub-region of Manhattan Beach.

Here's a link to the spreadsheet: "MB Pending/Sold as of 11/15/25".