Preliminary look at March 2008 Redondo Beach sales

I waited until I got the Manhattan Beach Reporter tonight so I could fold the home sales for the week of March 31 - April 6 into the March numbers. I now have 35 sale records to look at. I know that there were 32 sales recorded in Redondo Beach for March, according to Home Data, so I probably folded in a few April sales - oh well.

STAT     SEP 2007   OCT 2007  NOV  2007   DEC 2007   JAN 2008    FEB 2008    MAR 2008
records        68         44         37         26         25          25          35
MEDIAN   $857,000   $755,000   $832,500   $782,500   $795,000    $755,000    $789,000
AVERAGE  $935,506   $770,416   $933,956   $832,827   $932,117    $831,500    $961,714
MIN      $369,900   $369,900   $379,000   $486,500   $449,900    $520,000    $585,000
MAX    $2,400,000 $2,560,000 $2,500,000 $1,500,000 $2,130,000  $1,590,000  $2,100,000

For March 2007, I had 105 sale records according to my final SALE records, with a median saleprice at $755,000, an average at $813,253, a min of $370,000 and a max of $2,027,000. So strictly looking at median price YOY, it looks like it is up 4.5%, but I wonder if I am really comparing apples to apples, given how the composition of the market has changed.

Looking back over my notes, I see I was very busy in the March-April 2007 time frame and didn't do the calculations for March 2007 that I would normally do. But my trusty Excel workbook still has the data. Another calculation of March sales, which I did on SUPPLY records, shows 90 records with a median sale price of $749,000 (not far from my first calculation), plus a median square footage of 1691 and an average square footage of 1773. Now let's look at square footage on current sales.

Median square footage for March was at 1931. Square footage on homes sold has continued to inch up, probably because of the newer bubble construction. Comparing the median square footage of homes sold in March 2008 compared to March 2007, it is up over 14%. This is a good indication that in terms of price, we are comparing apples to oranges, unfortunately.

How long did it take the sold homes to sell?

I thought this was pretty wild. For a few months I have been calculating median DOM as slightly over 4 months. Now it has leaped up to 5 months (152 days), and the average has landed there too (151 days).

Remember, my "DOM" is a more honest DOM. Some sales took nearly a year, counting from when I first found the property listed.

And how much did home sellers have to reduce their original asking prices?

NO homes sold for MORE than their original asking prices. The median PCTRED was 6.4% and the average was 7.2%. These numbers have been edging down slightly the past few months. It could mean that relatively newer sellers are getting better about initial pricing. We've really got 2 different sets of sellers on the DOM chart, so I'm guessing maybe the sellers clustered around 60 days initially priced their homes better than those sellers clustered around 240 days. If looking for practical advice on selling a home, I'd rather say you may have a shot at selling it within about 60 days if you price it really well, but if you insist on top dollar, expect it to sit on the market six months to a year - than say you'll sell your home in a median 5 months.

So that is what I came up with - median price is slightly higher from my year-ago calculation, but median square footage on homes sold is up more substantially. We are not comparing apples to apples YOY. DOM leaped up to 5 months, remaining tail-heavy, while percent reductions on asking prices seem to be drifting down.

Sales look like they are perking up a little now, which should not be surprising since they were really scraping close to bottom in volume. We'll just have to see how far the government bailout fuels the spring selling season.