Los Angeles Beach Cities Resale Activity for January 2008

Before I get on to the charts, you might want to visit Economic Indicators and ponder for a moment the "budgetary restraints" that would compel our Federal government to cease publication of economic statistics such as New Residential Sales, New Residential Construction, Personal Income and Outlays, and Gross Domestic Product (how can they not publish GDP?!?!?). I mean, I KNOW these numbers are bogus, but come on! Are the "budgetary restraints" an outcome of this stimulus package?

Then, you might want to cruise over to the L.A. Times and check out a February 16 story by Evan Halper called "California defers budget deficit". California is performing accounting maneuvers that would get a publicly traded company thoroughly spanked by the SEC and its CEO tarred, feathered, hot-iron branded on the butt as a criminal and permanently marked with a scarlet letter - that is - if he (or she) lives to survive the ordeal. The state of California is now "in the worst financial shape in years" according to the story.

My my, how quickly things have changed! Consider an L.A. Times article dated November 12, 2006, by Maria L. La Ganga and Scott Martelle, titled "California voters in a happy state - for the first time in years, exit polls show an electorate optimistic about the future". It contains social mood-marking tidbits such as:

Voters have approved a building spree that will fix schools, patch roads and provide
jobs for years to come.

And election day exit surveys by the Los Angeles Times Poll showed that nearly 
two-thirds of California's electorate thinks the state is on the right track — only 
the second time optimism has been so strong in the 15 years the poll has asked voters 
about the direction they believe California is headed.

"I guess it's going pretty good," said Melendez, 42, whose Hacienda Heights house has 
more than tripled in value since he bought it in 1997. "I love California."

Our social mood is undergoing a major shift. Our California experience from the early 90's clues us in as to what to expect, but since this economic reversal is of higher magnitude, in my opinion it's going to get much much worse than the early 90's.

Now, on to these bogus charts. I've reformatted the charts so that your eyes are drawn more to the moving average lines, which present a *somewhat* clearer picture than the raw monthly data. However, I continue to meditate on the meaning of "median price" on such low sales volume. It's a whole lot of nothing.

Here are the detailed RESALE statistics for the beach cities and some of the surrounding zip codes:

                         SFR   MEDIAN    %YOY    CONDO  MEDIAN   %YOY  
COMMUNITY         ZIP    SALES   SFR      CHG    SALES  CONDO     CHG
LA/Westchester    90045   15    $772     13.0%     2     $328   -30.2% 
El Segundo        90245    5  $1,200     58.0%   N/A      N/A     N/A
Hawthorne         90250   13    $450    -17.4%     3     $417    +4.5%  
Hermosa Beach     90254    3  $1,761    -25.4%     3   $1,490   +66.6%  
Lawndale          90260    3    $503    -12.5%     2     $473   +43.7%  
Manhattan Beach   90266   17  $1,575    +20.4%     1   $3,300  +116.4%  
Palos Verdes Pen. 90274    8  $1,855    +15.9%   N/A      N/A      N/A  
Rancho P.V.       90275   15  $1,330    +43.2%     7     $500   -10.7%   
Redondo Beach     90277   11  $1,070    +23.7%     9     $770    -2.4%   
Redondo Beach     90278   14    $758     +9.5%     6     $573   -14.5%

What MIGHT be of interest is my unresolved inventory snapshot for Redondo Beach from February 14. Remember, what I call "unresolved inventory" is all homes that have been listed for sale in websites such as Zip Realty, for which I have yet to find a sale record.

To the best of my knowledge, the median current asking price on all this unresolved inventory is $819,000, down from a median original asking price of $849,000. The average current asking price is $940,822, down from an average original asking price of $979,651. And if you recall, my preliminary snapshot of January sales for Redondo Beach showed a median sale price of $795,000 and an average sale price of $932,117. Those sales came with a median original asking price of $875,000 and average original asking price of $1,027,968. I'll summarize these numbers in a table:

        prelim Jan    unres inv
        median        median
        orig ask      orig ask
 
        $875,000      $849,000
      
        prelim Jan    unres inv
        average       average
        orig ask      orig ask

      $1,027,968      $979,651

        prelim Jan    unres inv
        median        median
        saleprice     current ask

        $795,000      $819,000

        prelim Jan    unres inv
        average       average
        saleprice     current ask

        $932,117      $940,822

As you can see, a gap is starting to open up again between recent sale prices and current asking prices.

The median PCTRED on unresolved inventory is 1.0%, while the average PCTRED is 3.4%. Compare that to the PCTREDs on January sales, with the median of 9.5% and the average of 7.7%. Notice that the original asking price numbers for unresolved inventory are actually LOWER than those for January sales. January sellers started off with higher asking prices and slashed more deeply.