CAR/DQNews 2008 Summary for Redondo Beach

I've pretty much got my listing and sales database caught up, just in time for the deluge of spring listings.

However, I'm desperately trying to strike a balance between 1) blogging, and 2) life, so keep in mind that I'm not intending to blog nearly as much as I used to.

Also, it's pretty indicative that all is Not Well when Shorewood, the biggest realtor in the area, has not taken the effort to post sales data on its website since July 2008 sales - and that was in October, after I did some mild nudging. I have a cordial relationship with their data person, who unfortunately has been very ill. But you'd think his company would offload his responsibility on to somebody else to keep its website up-to-date.

Since Shorewood's data is not so readily available, I won't for now be publishing preliminary monthly estimates and then comparing them to Shorewood's data later in the month. Unless the company's data becomes available again and I end up with tons of free time...

Anyway, here are the charts summarizing median price activity for Redondo Beach across 2008. My significant other made some interesting comments about these charts last night. He noted the initial double top in 2005, then an initial decline in 2006 and then the "blow off" in 2007, followed by a decline and the relative leveling off in 2008. I surmised that the 2007 blowoff top was due to the decline in the sales of lower end properties while sales of higher end properties merrily continued, thus inflating the median price. In 2008, there was a bit of to-and-fro, back-and-forth price activity, but after initially punching through to nearly $650,000, there was rather steady price support at the $675,000 level. The leveling off in 2008 is causing the YOY line, in turn, to climb upwards again.

The double top in 2005 shortly followed the beach cities inventory to sales ratio bottom (indicating very tight inventory). The ratio bottomed in late spring or early summer 2005. I derived that ratio from Shorewood inventory and sales data, but I won't resume publishing it unless Shorewood data comes back to life.

I regularly see short sales at 2004 price levels (2008 short sales will be the topic of my next post.) Now the question on everyone's mind is - where do we go from here? Will President Porkulus save the day and encourage the falling Ginzu knife shoppers to foolishly continue living beyond their means and overpaying for real estate? Will valuation reality be delayed another few years?

By the way, California Association of Realtors (CAR) redid its website last year, and its link system makes a heck of a lot more sense now. I encourage you to check out the CAR newsstand. You can find 2008 historical prices for cities in California by following the link structure

http://www.car.org/economics/historicalprices/2008medianprices/xxx2008medianprices/

Where xxx is the three letter abbreviation of a month.