Jan. Almost Best Ever - Manhattan Beach Market Update for 1/31/26

In sports, there are all kinds of clichés amounting to how the outcome of a given contest cannot be predicted. 

"The game isn't played on paper..."

"On any given Sunday..." 

"Anything can happen once the whistle blows..."

Well, guess what? You can't predict the local real estate market, either. 

After a sometimes-flailing second half to 2025, it was reasonable to expect a tepid start to 2026. 

NOPE!

Manhattan Beach has just turned in a January with $121.3 million worth of new escrows. The second half of the month was even busier than the first half, which had seen $56M in new deals.

This $121M total is:

• 50% more dollar volume than the go-go COVID year of 2021,
• 275% of the volume from woebegone 2023, and 
• only the second year ever over $100M, within 33% of 2025's record-smashing pace.

Wha wha wha?

Let's see where this is all coming from.

First, it's only partly in the number of new deals, although that is impressively above average.

The 26 new deals in January this year was bested only twice in the prior 9 years.

Take note: 26 deals this year is more than the 24 in early 2021, which was a banger of a year overall.

Average for the 10 years leading up to this year (2016-25) was 23 deals, so we're +3 over that.

Of these 26 deals, 11 were priced at $5M or above, and 3 were over $8M. 

Mood Shift?

Out in the field, you can see a broader "awakening" out there in the market, with busy open houses and multiple offers on numerous listings. (We've written in a few of those competitions already.) 

It "feels like" our usual Spring market, ordinarily mid-late February and bustling by March.

As always, there's no one thing to point to which might explain the surge of activity. 

Obviously, there has been no major event like last year's fires and dislocations, or any substantial mortgage rate drop. 

We may just be seeing pent-up demand – meaning, buyers did seem to retreat a bit in the later part of 2025, and those with needs and plans may now just be deciding it's time to come back. 

Supply is a part of the equation, also. There have been "just enough" new listings to come out and hold buyers' interest, without flooding the market and leading to either indecision or a phenomenon of "mass waiting" – where buyers sense an advantage developing as more and more sellers bring out homes at the same time. 

And don't rule out good weather. We had plenty of rain leading into the New Year and in the first couple days of January, but the clear, warm and beautiful days ever since have paired nicely with visiting open houses, and perhaps the kind of elevated mood one might need to jump into multiple offers. (Yes, you need a big down payment and a bunch of Vitamin D to compete.)

If this is the lead-in to the Spring market, it's going to be a good Q1 – at least. 

For those who saw a buyer's market taking shape, sorry to say that, once again, that seems not to be happening. 

(Question for the group: When was the last buyer's market? Discuss.)  

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Nerdy note 1: This analysis is custom-built by Dave Fratello for MB Confidential using our twice-monthly MB Market Update spreadsheets. It's only possible by calculating data based on the new escrows captured in each of our snapshots of market activity, taken at the start and middle of each month. We've found that MLS compilations are mostly inaccurate due to a quirk in how they count "pending" sales. We mean: You can only get this data here.

Nerdy note 2: Some deals captured in our snapshots don't pan out, and we can miss other escrows that aren't pending on the dates we take our snapshots. For instance, a deal for 2208 The Strand (asking $11.995M) is included in our totals above, even though the property came back to market later. However, a new deal for 1612 Magnolia (asking $3.999M) was made and fell out in between our updates; therefore, it was never counted as a pending. 

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Here's the rest of our local real estate market update report for the period ending 1/31/26:

> 42 active listings as of 1/31/26 (+3 from 1/15/26) 

> 29 SFRs (-1)

> 13 THs (+4)

See the Inventory list as of 1/31/26 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 (+1)

> Sand Section: 15 actives (+4)

> Hill Section: 1 actives (-1)

> East MB: 16 actives (-1)

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 1/31/26".