It's probably fair to say that happenings in the real estate industry this year have been more interesting than what's been going on in our local market.
We're seeing prices basically flat, and sales totals basically flat compared to last year. And last year was not a sexy year.
But you do see some momentum picking up in the second half of the year.
We'll address all of that here as we look at data from the end of Q3 2024.
Median Price Not Moving Much
The median home price for Manhattan Beach as of Sept. 30, 2024, was $2.775M – just like it was 3 other months this year, and not greatly different from where it was for almost all of the past 12 months, since the end of Q3 '23. (Remember, we always present median price data based on a rolling 12-month sample of sales.)
We had an agent ask us just the other day about a home sale that closed in March this year: Would the same house sell for the same price today?
The question was loaded with the presumption that the answer was "no," that prices are softer, or down, in the several months since then. (Haha. You'll usually overhear agents puffing up price trends, unless they're setting up a negotiation and want to get a lower price on your listing, as was the case in this instance.)
The data show us that, based on all sales city-wide, a sale in March probably would occur at the same price today. But y'know, your results may vary. No rule says that any one house's value tracks the market median.
Flat prices are fine. But there is this reminder. This yearlong "flat" trend follows a period of median price decline in Manhattan Beach, the falloff from the great heights reached during the time of 3%-and-under mortgage interest rates.
Our second chart here shows that our market's median price has given up those 2021-23 gains, in a dropoff that began abruptly in May 2023.
The median home price for Manhattan Beach had once hit $3.166M, but we're down 12.3% from there today.
It almost looks like nothing has happened in 2024. (See our full page about median home prices in Manhattan Beach, including links to past analyses.)
Quarterly Sales Compare Best to 2023
For most of 2024, the total number of homes sold in Manhattan Beach has exceeded the number sold in the previous year, 2023. That's good, because 2023 saw a historically low ebb in the number of home sales in town, and you don't really want to be anywhere near that low again.
And yet, right now, Q1-Q3 look a lot more like 2023 than any other recent year.
We saw 216 sales close here in 2024 in the first 3 quarters, better than the 202 that closed in 2023 over the same period. But that's still too close for comfort.
And, as you can see in our colorful chart, most of the extra sales that push this year over last year occurred in the first quarter (60 sales vs. 40 sales). Meantime, this year's Q2 and Q3 each saw slightly fewer sales than the same time periods last year (uh-oh).
As just a couple other touch points, 2019 had 289 sales by the end of Q3, and 2020 – the year without a Spring market – had 291. So this year is still lagging.
You can see in our chart that Q4 almost always has fewer sales than Q3, but Q4 is often notably better than Q1. These observations might help you make some guesses about how many more sales to expect in Q4 this year. You might set the over/under at 70 or so, and see what kind of action comes in.
A Look at Sales By Price
We have noted a couple of times here on the blog that pricier properties seem to have been selling more often later in the year here.
Now, we have a chart that shows that, and more.
This scatter-plot chart shows the prices for every home sale to date in Manhattan Beach during 2024.
The y-axis for prices here is a bit extreme due to a couple $20M+ sales, but still, that helps to show a major point.
Eight of the top 10 sales of the year occurred after June 1, and in fact, all 10 top sales came after May 15. So the later part of the year has been a great deal busier at the high end than the first part of the year. (A trend we first pointed to in August in "MB's Higher End Is Moving.")
This action at the higher end is what we referred to as the "spice" in the numbers up in the post headline. The year 2024 looks kinda vanilla, with only a tentative recovery compared to 2023, until you pay attention to those "bolts from the blue," the highest-end sales. They could mean something to the longer-term future of the market.
We enjoyed that scatter-plot so much, we decided to offer you one more look at it. We just made one change.
By dropping out the top 10 sales, we get a more limited y-axis, and more of a chance to see the typical range of prices for homes sold in Manhattan Beach.
Here, the white dotted line - - - is the current median home price of $2.775M. You can see how many sales are clustered under that line, and where they land. (By the definition of median prices, half the sales are above, and half below, that dotted line, except of course, we're missing 10 dots above in this presentation.)
This concludes our class for the day. Hope you're leaving a little bit smarter than you were before. And hey, be careful out there.
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Here's the rest of our local real estate market update report for the period ending 9/30/24:
> 79 active listings as of 9/30/24 (-2 from 9/15/24)
> 56 SFRs (-2)
> 23 THs (flat)
See the Inventory list as of 9/30/24 here, or see the MB Dashboard for up-to-the-minute data.
Active listings by region of Manhattan Beach in this report:
> Tree Section: 9 actives (-1)
> Sand Section: 41 actives (-1)
> Hill Section: 10 actives (+3)
> East MB: 19 actives (-3)
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 9/30/24".
