Redondo Beach statistics - take 2

Oops! I made a substantial error when I crunched the December sales data and so I deleted the prior statistics post. DOM was calculated incorrectly. I have now fixed that. Median DOM is less than 3 months, but still climbing at 77 days. The rest of the posting is now corrected.

Here at the South Bay Beach Cities Bubble blog, we like to crunch the Redondo Beach real estate numbers. I guess some would call it a geek spectator sport! While we're waiting for the DataQuick numbers for December, I thought I'd look at what information I already have and then compare it to DataQuick later this month to see how far off I am.

At this point in my database construction, I would estimate that I am missing about 20% to 30% of the listings out there. But if I have a good representative sample of listings and of sales, and the numbers are sufficiently large, then that factor should not weigh heavily.

Domania seems to be really behind on updating its sales records from late November on. So I just manually searched Zillow and then updated by hand those sales for which I had inventory records, all the way back to early November.

Of my inventory records, so far I've only found 37 matching sales records for December. (MelissaData recorded 43 sales apiece in each of 90277 and 90278, so there is a lot of missing sale data out there!) The numbers I have are listed here. I went ahead and calculated the Median, Average, Min, and Max of the original asking price, the final sale price, the DOM, and the percent reduction (PCTRED) from the original asking price. PCTRED is positive; if it is negative, that means the final sale price was more than the original asking price.

Reed                  9/21/2006   739000  12/26/2006   719000   96   2.7
Marshallfield         11/4/2006   644500  12/22/2006   644500   48   0.0
Axenty                10/11/2006  819900  12/22/2006   735000   72  10.4
Morgan                10/2/2006   834900  12/22/2006   800000   81   4.2
Esplanade             8/30/2006   640000  12/22/2006   635000  114   0.8
Ruxton                9/11/2006   709000  12/22/2006   690000  102   2.7
Marshallfield         10/19/2006  589000  12/21/2006   586466   63   0.4
Paseo de la Playa     5/18/2006   839000  12/21/2006   639000  217  23.8
Robinson              10/18/2006  609000  12/21/2006   589000   64   3.3
Rockefeller           11/6/2006   609999  12/20/2006   610000   44   0.0
Avenue D              10/18/2006  985000  12/20/2006   945000   63   4.1
Grant                 11/12/2006  669000  12/19/2006   659000   37   1.5
Broadway              10/10/2006  974900  12/18/2006   929000   69   4.7
Emerald               10/18/2006  699000  12/18/2006   704500   61  -0.8
Esplanade             10/2/2006   895000  12/18/2006   825000   77   7.8
Vanderbilt            9/18/2006   809000  12/15/2006   799000   88   1.2
Ripley                6/21/2006   869000  12/15/2006   700000  177  19.5
Grevillea             9/17/2006   598000  12/15/2006   598000   89   0.0
Paseo de la Playa     9/21/2006   799000  12/15/2006   795000   85   0.5
Garnet                10/11/2006 1195000  12/14/2006  1285000   64  -7.5
Phelan                10/4/2006   610000  12/13/2006   595000   70   2.5
Huntington            7/25/2006   774900  12/13/2006   650000  141  16.1
Van Horne             9/27/2006   829900  12/13/2006   839000   77  -1.1
Grant                 10/24/2006  529000  12/13/2006   565500   50  -6.9
Aviation              9/15/2006   535000  12/13/2006   475000   89  11.2
Francisca             9/28/2006   895000  12/12/2006   880000   75   1.7
The Village           5/30/2006   639999  12/12/2006   600000  196   6.3
Juanita               9/28/2006   829000  12/12/2006   805000   75   2.9
Armour                10/17/2006  699000  12/8/2006    683000   52   2.3
Stanford              9/8/2006    889000  12/7/2006    795000   90  10.6
Rockefeller           10/11/2006  749000  12/6/2006    739000   56   1.3
Huntington            10/15/2006  939000  12/6/2006    940000   52  -0.1
Mathews               8/9/2006    629000  12/5/2006    565000  118  10.2
Rockefeller           7/10/2006   599900  12/5/2006    538000  148  10.3
Camino de las Colinas 10/11/2006 1349000  12/5/2006   1299500   55   3.7
Calle Miramar         7/7/2006   1649000  12/1/2006   1400000  147  15.1
Carmelita             8/4/2006   1099000  12/1/2006   1025000  119   6.7

                     MEDIAN       774900               704500   77   2.7
                     AVERAGE      804646               764364   90   4.6
                     MIN          529000               475000   37  -7.5
                     MAX         1649000              1400000  217  23.8

ASKING is the original asking price that I was able to trace for a property. Keep in mind that I calculate DOM from the original listing date that I have recorded for a property, not what the last relisting date was in the MLS. So as you can see, DOM (days on market), is climbing, with average DOM now smack at 3 months (90 days). For November, raw average DOM for the beach cities, according to Shorewood, was about 60 days. Some of this difference is due to the way I calculate DOM - from the first ever listing date, not from the last relisting date. Plus of course, Shorewood's number is for all the beach cities, not just Redondo. In addition, my figures tend to understate DOM, because I only started compiling these records in late September, and for listings I took out of local paper advertisements at that time, I entered the date of newspaper publication as the original listing date of a property, when in reality a property featured in an ad was already listed for some time before that paper's publication.

As this market progresses, I expect PCTRED to tighten up as market participants get a clue and come to the realization that they aren't likely to get their full-blown fantasy asking prices. The smart realtors who can persuade their clients to do so will list properties at asking prices at much closer to real time sales figures, not what something might have sold for in the late spring of 2005.

But on the other hand, I could be totally wrong in placing faith in the market participants gaining wisdom. January 2007 sales figures for Redondo Beach, 90278 in particular, are looking the best they have in a year, and this could be pumping back up expectations of a boom market. (Never mind that sale activity in the rest of the beach city zip codes ranges from sluggish to dismal.) But I think it is a bear trap. Since New Year, new inventory for Redondo is hitting Zip Realty at a rate of over 3 properties a day. And by "new", I mean, property that is really a new listing, or at least not an expired listing since before late September. Even though Zip Realty calls them new listings, I am not even counting the relistings that been hitting Zip Realty, though I am recording price reductions in my records. So while sales might be pumped up, inventory is also coming on the market early and quickly.

And speaking of new inventory, this is what I have for Redondo since New Year:

The Village        1/12/2007    464000
Lucia              1/12/2007   1995000
Steinhart          1/12/2007   1275000
Pearl              1/11/2007    850000
Calle Mayor        1/10/2007    859000
Pacific Coast      1/10/2007    925000
Prospect           1/10/2007    388000
Grant              1/9/2007     875000
Morgan             1/9/2007     769000
Perkins            1/9/2007     650000
Paseo de Gracia    1/9/2007    1299000
Guadalupe          1/9/2007     879000
Esplanade          1/9/2007    2690000
Broadway           1/8/2007    1279000
Curtis             1/8/2007     749000
Blossom            1/8/2007    1219000
Pullman            1/8/2007     919000
Garnet             1/8/2007    1375000
Calle Mayor        1/7/2007    1895000
Juanita            1/7/2007    1399000
Juanita            1/6/2007    1369000
Calle Mayor        1/5/2007     709000
Grant              1/5/2007     799000
Vanderbilt         1/5/2007     529900
Grant              1/4/2007     839000
Felton             1/4/2007     689900
Grant              1/4/2007     829000
Ralston            1/3/2007     869000
Juanita            1/3/2007     939000
Pacific Coast      1/3/2007     730000
Paseo de la Playa  1/3/2007    1395000
The Village        1/3/2007     379000
Guadalupe          1/3/2007    1650000
Belmont            1/2/2007     799900
Irena              1/2/2007     919000
  
                   MEDIAN       872000
                   AVERAGE     1017176
                   MIN          379000
                   MAX         2690000

And here is what it looks like charted:

If these figures are any good at all, then they are telling us that there is this built-in expectation of major price gains between what sold in December and what is now being asked in January, at least by the new market participants. Notice the jump in median from $704,500 to $872,000. By the way, there are many high end properties being listed. Not captured in these figures are two Esplanade properties, each with an asking price over $3 million, listed just before Christmas.

When I have better sales figures, I will try and update these calculations. The high end sales seem a little thin, judging by the first graph above.