The year 2024 did deliver on the most basic, limited promises it held.
It was a recovery year in the Manhattan Beach real estate market. It was better than 2023. (As promised in "Looks Like a 2024 Will Be a Recovery Year.")
We saw more sales, and a higher median price for the market.
More money was invested in local home purchases.
So congrats, 2024: You did it! You beat the worst year recently on record.
However, in this class, we don't hand out A's just for showing up.
There is a lot of room for this market to do better – a lot of work to do just to reach "normal" again.
Final Sales Totals
As our first chart above shows, with 304 sales within the calendar year, Manhattan Beach improved pretty dramatically over 2023's dismal 253 sales.
That's a 20% boost year-over-year. Not bad, and definitely the direction you want to see.
Only last year, it was the opposite. In a larger analysis, we noted that MB was down 21% year-over-year. (See "How Far Home Sales Fell in SoCal in 2023.")
Most South Bay markets, and all the major California counties south of Ventura, last year saw sales declines of a similar scale.
So, again, it's good to be up, after everyone was down.
Yet we can't ignore something that stands out in that chart: 304 sales is the second-lowest of all the 17 years accounted for in our data. This year was slower than recession-impacted 2008, and well below recovery-year 2009.
Something near 400 sales is typical for MB in a year, and here, we were barely over 300. Context matters.
Two Hot Quarters
There is something curious in the year's data.
It wasn't always better than 2023 here.
The year began and closed in promising fashion, but the middle was mushy.
The number of sales closing in the first quarter of 2024 was up 50% year-over-year (20 sales total).
The jump in hot-hot-hot Q4 was even more dramatic: 69% and 36 sales.
But look at Q2 and Q3. In the middle of the year, 2024 failed to fully keep pace with 2023 in local sales, down 5 over those 6 months.
It's a darn good thing we saw that late Summer/early Fall spike in market activity.
Look Who's #1
We do need to step away from market-wide stats just for a moment to toot our own horn.
The year 2024 saw Dave and the Edge team rank #1 in sales totals for the Hill Section, besting all other real estate brokers.
Only one other agent was closer than about $5.9M to our year-end total of $20.050M in sales just within the tiny district.
We reached this summit representing both buyers and sellers.
And we're not done. Watch for more from us in 2025.
Median Price Climbs Back Up
No one could quite believe it when the Manhattan Beach median home price dropped precipitously in 2023.
This past year, the median was closer to the norm for 2021-22, coming in at $3.025M as of Dec. 2024.
That's a jump of $225K (+8%) over 2023.
Much as we saw in the Q2-Q3 data, the middle of the year was a bit soft. There was even a late-Summer dip to $2.712M.
That's our first look at year-end data from 2024.
We'll continue to bring in new data and new angles, draw in some comparisons, and look at some landmark high and low sales all across the Manhattan Beach market.
Stay tuned right here!
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Here's the rest of our local real estate market update report for the period ending 12/31/24:
> 38 active listings as of 12/31/24 (-16 from 12/15/24)
> 28 SFRs (-15)
> 10 THs (-1)
See the Inventory list as of 12/31/24 here, or see the MB Dashboard for up-to-the-minute data.
Active listings by region of Manhattan Beach in this report:
> Tree Section: 5 actives (-3)
> Sand Section: 17 actives (-9)
> Hill Section: 4 actives (flat)
> East MB: 11 actives (-5)
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 12/31/24".
Please see our blog disclaimer.
Listings presented above are supplied via the MLS and are brokered by a variety of agents and firms, not Dave Fratello or Edge Real Estate Agency, unless so stated with the listing. Images and links to properties above lead to a full MLS display of information, including home details, lot size, all photos, and listing broker and agent information and contact information.
