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

Shorewood has graciously sent me its June statistics.

According to the realty firm, the average DOM for sales in the four beach cities was 53, which is the highest June DOM since I've started keeping track of Shorewood's DOM numbers, which go back to July 2004.

My calculation of DOM (time on market) for Redondo Beach starts the counter from when a property is first listed, not from its last relisting before it is sold. So my calculations for June were a median 127 days and an average 182 days. If you check my prior postings, you'll see that there are really "two markets", with one set of sellers pricing aggressively and selling relatively quickly, while another set of sellers lets their properties sit on the market, for literally years. My calculated median and average fall in the middle of the extremes and probably aren't representative of the experience of your typical Redondo home seller.

In terms of sales relative to inventory, inventory rose and sales declined when compared to a year ago. I-S/S is still very high. June 2007 saw 582 properties for sale and June 2008 saw 720. June 2007 saw 181 sales and June 2008 saw 116 sales. It's not reflected in the Moving Average yet, but there is a possibility that I-S/S has bottomed for the summer, and could climb from here. We shall see.

Beach cities median sale price appears to be zigzagging its way down, with a zig (up) for June.

Take a look at Shorewood's press release, and you'll see that sales in all price categories are down when compared to June 2007. Then take a look at homes for sale by price range, and you'll see that the inventory of lower-end homes has more than doubled and tripled. The higher-end range has not piled on anything close to that in inventory, according to Shorewood's numbers. Indeed, Shorewood reports that it was the higher-end homes that appeared to drive the June market, which does not bode well for the market, as the bubble zing that was so prominent in this market in 2004-2006 just isn't there.

A query of my Redondo database for unsold homes $2,000,000 and over shows 29 records, with some original list dates going back nearly 2 years. As you'll see in my July dollar volume report, I think the high end is already starting to fall off a bit, but we'll get to that in due time.