We continue looking back at statistics for the year that was, 2025. (For more on prices and quarterly sales, see this recent market update for 12/31/25.)
We'll start out with the big picture: Total sales for the year.
With 325 closings, 2025 was the best for Manhattan Beach home sales since 2021. That's great, but frankly, this was not by as great a margin as once seemed possible, with a huge rush of sales early in the year.
325 sales bested 2022's 322 by a smidgen, topped last year by 21 sales (not quite 2 per month), and of course the year towered above dreadful 2023, with almost 30% more sales.
This is all well and good, but we often note that a typical year in Manhattan Beach sees closer to 400 sales, we we're still far behind that pace. The chart above provides such an extended look at the data to make that point clearer.
Guys, 2025 wasn't even better than 2009. So let's keep our perspectives straight.
This is still a market suffering with lower overall supply, as people hold onto their homes and cheap mortgages. (We'll discuss inventory in the last part of this post.)
Special Report: 2026 Outlook
This blog update continues below, but we're also calling your attention to a special report you can get directly by email.
Our 2026 Outlook provides even more indepth analysis of what 2025 trends mean for 2026, along with our expectations for prices, mortgage rates, sales, and various submarkets within Manhattan Beach here in the new year.
The report is free for the asking. Just click the button above or follow this link to request the report. It will come to your inbox within minutes. Enjoy!
OK, back to the blog.
Sales Data By Price Point: Big Jump Over $8M
We've reported that the median price for Manhattan Beach has leapt again, now to $3.325M.
That means half the sales occur below $3.325M, and half above.
But what are the actual price ranges for most local home sales?
This chart helps.
Precisely equal numbers of homes sold last year under $3M and between $3M and $5M, in each case making up 40% of the total sales.
Since you already know that 50% of sales were up to $3.325M, if 40% were up to $3.000M, you know that means 10% of sales were priced in the narrow range of $3.000-$3.325M, for what that's worth.
One way to look at this chart is to say that 80% of all sales in Manhattan Beach were under $5M, and that's right. And guess what? That total is unchanged from 2024.
Aha! The total is unchanged, but the proportions are different. In 2024, 50% of sales were under $3M, while in 2025, 10% of those were up in the next price tier.
There's another year-to-year change affecting the higher end.
Fewer homes sold in the $5M-$8M tier in 2025 than in 2024, but there was a notable jump in $8M+ sales.
The charts above seem to understate the activity over $8M. Let's look at those data separately.
In fact, sales over $8M nearly doubled from year to year, hitting 27 sales in 2025, over 14 in '24.
This is 50% more $8M+ sales than in go-go 2021, a year that actually had 60% more total sales in the market.
Oh, we know, someone's going to say: "That was just a flash in the pan, early in the year, when there was a rush of Palisades buyers coming in."
Not really.
Only 10 of the 27 sales over $8M closed in the 1st quarter. Almost half were in the second half of the year. (And we're not including sales which didn't hit the MLS, like Luka Doncic's $25M purchase in the Hill Section.)
Inventory Was Part of the Story
You can't have sales if you don't have listings.
A chronic shortage of inventory has been part of what kept sales totals down after mortgage rates dropped during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and rose again in mid-2022.
In 2025, more inventory – for most of the year – did help contribute to higher sales.
First let's look at the map of inventory for the whole year, by itself.
The overall shape of this graph is typical, with very low inventory at the start and finish of the year, and a bulkier middle of the year.
We're only looking at inventory measured by what's on the market at any given time unsold, so this is never a complete picture of market activity, meaning how many sellers or buyers have dived in for the year.
But you still see a little bit of an early burst, with inventory at 67 by the end of February, right as our traditional "Spring" market normally takes off. We saw peaks in the 90s and even at 100 by Summer, and a steep drop toward the end of the year.
How does this all compare?
This chart of 5 years' worth of data is a bit more challenging to follow, but the important points come through.
For a little over 3 months, 2025 had the highest inventory of any year out of the past 5 – that bulky Spring/Summer period that included the peak at 100.
Other than a bit of a margin over 2024's data, the numbers for 2025 were generally most comparable with that prior year. From the middle of September onwards, both years were very close almost all along.
That's interesting.
With inventory close each year and sales totals pretty close also, 2024 and 2025 almost seemed to establish a "new normal."
We should note that "higher inventory" here in the past couple of years has not been "high" inventory, like you might see associated with a stagnant market. Not yet.
We'll keep coming back to 2025 data from various angles, but you've got most of the big-picture numbers now.
Hey, don't forget to order our 2026 Outlook. Free at this link.
