DQNews: Los Angeles Beach Cities Resale Activity for August 2008

Thanks to some of you for your emails asking where the heck I am. I have been so busy at work that not only have I not been keeping up the blog but we had to cancel our vacation. Trust me, I'd rather be insanely busy than not have a job at all. Technically, I am a California *state* employee working in the UCLA School of Medicine. But the fiscal and economic future of California is not looking good so I don't know what that says about my future. My position is normally funded by NIH grants, not state budget, so that offers me a bit of protection at least for now.

I am doing a rush job here trying to catch up on data. Once I get through a big finance meeting at work at the end of October, I'll be a bit more relaxed and can devote some time to this again.

It's been easy to let this blog slide as it's been like watching a boring little tugboat sink whereas the spectacle we are witnessing in the global financial markets is like watching the Titanic sink and the Lusitania get torpedoed.

In addition to what I've been going through, my contact at Shorewood Realtors who normally updates the Shorewood website with monthly data has been seriously ill, which I pray is not terminal. I've contacted Shorewood and they are doing their best to fill the gaps, but between losing their data man and witnessing the price action in these markets it's been difficult maintaining their data at the moment.

I've been talking about mass psychology on this blog almost since I started it in late 2005. What's happening to peoples' 401k accounts and stock investments is going to have a profound impact on their desire to speculate in the housing market. I'll try to talk about this more in detail later after I get caught up.

Anyway, here's the August home sale story.

Here's the Southland data for August. Sales volume remains generally up over a year ago although the L.A. Business Journal story suggests that volume is starting to slide a bit again.

                  Sales Volume              Median Price
All homes      Jul-07     Jul-08     %Chng      Jul-07     Jul-08      %Chng
Los Angeles    6,809      6,592      -3.2%    $547,500   $400,000     -26.90%
Orange         2,391      2,799      17.1%    $640,000   $461,000     -28.00%
Riverside      2,769      4,116      48.6%    $399,000   $260,000     -34.80%
San Bernardino 2,008      2,521      25.5%    $355,000   $230,000     -35.20%
San Diego      3,106      3,431      10.5%    $489,000   $364,000     -25.60%
Ventura          784        870      11.0%    $582,500   $420,000     -27.90%
SoCal         17,867     20,329      13.8%    $505,000   $348,000     -31.10%

Here are the detailed RESALE statistics for the beach cities and some of the surrounding zip codes (prices are in 1000's):

                         SFR   MEDIAN    %YOY    CONDO  MEDIAN   %YOY  
COMMUNITY         ZIP    SALES   SFR      CHG    SALES  CONDO     CHG
LA/Westchester    90045   20    $700     -6.5%     1     $413   +16.3%
El Segundo        90245    4    $795    -13.8%     5     $450   -27.3%
Hawthorne         90250   23    $375    -28.2%     1     $425   -11.3%  
Hermosa Beach     90254    8    $920    -24.0%     6   $1,095    -6.4%  
Lawndale          90260    8    $365    -33.6%     2     $405    -9.7%  
Manhattan Beach   90266   36  $1,163    -31.2%     9   $1,029   -40.2%  
Palos Verdes Pen. 90274   17  $1,275    -12.1%     5     $580     N/A  
Rancho P.V.       90275   17  $1,053    -10.0%     8     $350   -55.4%   
Redondo Beach     90277    8    $900    -18.2%    20     $615   -23.1%   
Redondo Beach     90278   18    $620    -22.3%    24     $673    -4.9%