Share of Sales Over $3.5M Has Doubled

As Manhattan Beach home prices rose in the last few years, a major transition came about.

It's not just that the typical, or median, home's price has gone up.

The sheer number of sales at the higher end of the market has shifted upwards substantially.

Take a look at the percentage shares by various price points today, reflecting sales between Jan. 1-June 30, 2024.

Take note of the two green portions – they're showing that 39% of the closed sales this year were priced at $3.500M or higher.

And when you look at some historical data, the fact that 19% were priced $5.0M or higher is really stunning.

Meantime, sales under $1.5M have almost vanished (4%) and the single largest share of homes (37%) is selling between $1.5M-$2.5M.

Now, rewind the clock 5 years, pre-pandemic. Here's the same chart for Jan. 1-June 30, 2019.

Last things first: The share at $1.5M-$2.5M is exactly the same: 37%. 

But the share of sales over $3.5M is only 20% total, with just 8% over $5M.

Back in 2019, there was a somewhat bigger middle ($2.5M-$3.5M, 26%) and a much larger sub-$1.5M share (16%), 4x what we see today.

This transition toward more higher-priced sales in the market began in earnest during the pandemic-fueled real-estate boom of 2020, taking full shape by 2022. This fact may not surprise you, but the staying power of the trend might.

We first looked at the data carved this way 4 years ago this week, midway through the launch of that pandemic boom. At the time, the local median home price was just under $2.5M, and we wanted to compare both sales data and inventory & pending sales to what might be considered "normal."

In that post, we predicted that the local median home price was in for a rocket shot upwards, because so many higher-priced homes were both on the market and pending at the time. (Was this a daring prediction at the time? Not really! Prices jumped 10% within the year.)

Nerdy note: The reason these charts use the price tiers they do is a reflection of the $2.5M median price at the time we made the first charts in 2020. We were breaking down the market above and below that median point. Now we use the same tiers for historical comparisons.

You want a real history lesson?

Let's look at 2014.

Yowza. That's 73% of all local home sales under $2.500M. 

Only 5% over $5M, and about 11% total over $3.5M.

These days, 10 years doesn't feel like so long ago (although sometimes the months seem like years).

We can sure see here how rapidly our already-pricey market skewed even more toward the upper-upper end. And that fact seems like it's here to stay.