A July Chill - Manhattan Beach Market Update for 7/31/22

Remember how Manhattan Beach has been performing better than most other real estate markets recently?

Now we can say... we understand what everyone else is going through.

July saw a precipitous drop in new purchase contracts for Manhattan Beach homes.

A month that is often quite consistently near 40 new deals per month instead saw only 20.

It's supposed to be Summer. But there's a chill in the air.

It's all the usual factors you're hearing about in the news. Higher interest rates have paused some buyers' searches. Inventory remains quite low compared to average for the time of year. And we always note that Summer in Manhattan Beach is a somewhat slower time of year for home listings and purchases.

But if we're going to compare apples to apples, there's a "normal" number of July apples (around 40), there's 2020's bumper crop of 51 apples, and then there's this year's drought-ridden 20 apples.

Just last week, we were discussing how the Tree Section is avoiding this fate. The 8 new escrows we referenced there all began in July. The Sand Section, with greater inventory, also had 8. This left just 1 in the Hill Section and 3 in East Manhattan to round out the 20.

Worth noting: Inventory as of 7/31 was 63 listings, just 2 behind last year.

In 2020: 133!!!

Here's the rest of our local real estate market update report for the period ending 7/31/22:

> 63 active listings as of 7/31/22 (+3 from 7/15/22) 

> 55 SFRs (+6)

> 8 THs (-3)

See the Inventory list as of 7/31/22 here, or see the MB Dashboard for up-to-the-minute data.

Active listings by region of Manhattan Beach in this report:

> Tree Section: 14 actives (+2)

> Sand Section: 23 actives (flat)

> Hill Section: 14 actives (+2)

> East MB: 12 (-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 7/31/22".