Other measures of Los Angeles beach cities market activity, May 2008

Shorewood has published its May statistics.

According to the realty firm, the average DOM for sales in the four beach cities was 55, which is the highest May DOM since I've started keeping track of Shorewood's DOM numbers, which go back to July 2004.

In my calculations of median and average DOM for Redondo Beach sales, my notion of time on market is different from Shorewood's. The realty firm uses a strict interpretation, starting a counter from the last time a property is relisted before it is sold. My calculation of DOM looks at the time the property first enters the market and tallies all the time the property waits before it is finally sold. So it probably is no surprise that my calculation for Redondo Beach of average time on market is 173 days (nearly 6 months), which is skewed by homes sitting on the market for close to two years, and homes which enter the market priced very competitively and sell relatively quickly.

In terms of sales relative to inventory, sales edged up in May and inventory edged down. I-S/S is still very high. May 2007 saw 513 properties for sale and May 2008 saw 699. May 2007 saw 173 sales and May 2008 saw 135 sales.

Beach city median price appears to be showing some cracks, no doubt due to weakness in the high end and luxury market. Check Shorewood's press release by price category and you'll see that all price category sales are down below last year except for categories of homes sold under $750,000.

Shorewood doesn't like talking about price declines much, referring to the decline as a "psychological adjustment." The firm goes on to say that one month of decline is not necessarily the start of a trend, noting that foreclosures haven't impacted the beach cities the way they have other markets. The press release does not even mention weakness in the high-end market.

The firm does not discuss short sales at all. And as for foreclosures impacting the beach cities, my thoughts on that are "give it time."