Los Angeles South Bay Beach Cities Housing Bubble: Redondo Beach median price data from January 2002

Los Angeles South Bay Beach Cities Housing Bubble

Hello! I've lived continuously in Redondo Beach (the beach cities of Los Angeles) since 1995, and briefly in 1989-1990. During that time I watched a lot of old homes get torn down and Taj Mahalominiums get built in the area, with bubble prices to match. I actually started collecting housing price data in 2001-2002 but it wasn't until late 2005 I started blogging about this area. I'm doing my best to capture the local real estate bubble and ensuing fizzle.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Redondo Beach median price data from January 2002

First I want to tell readers that I will NOT be going into work (UCLA) on Saturday the 21st after all. So YES, I will be going to the grand opening of The Foundry, as it is right there next to the Torrance Farmers Market, where we go every Saturday morning. Hope to maybe see a few bubble blog readers there.

A blog reader has asked for data for other cities, and I poked around on CAR's website and found this housing data link. You'll find Excel workbooks (and html pages) of median prices by California city for each month of 2008, 2007, and 2006.

In addition, where it says "CITY MEDIAN HOME PRICES", there is a master workbook with data going back to January 2002. I took a look at it tonight to see if I could put a chart together for Manhattan Beach, but for some reason several of the recent home values (for example, December 2008) were simply filled in as N/A. When you go back and look at the California city chart for December 2008, you'll see that Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, and El Segundo do not even appear on the chart, which could explain the N/A for Manhattan Beach in the master workbook. I do not fully understand the absences on the December 2008 city chart, since the Los Angeles Times zip code chart showed some data for SFRs and condos in Manhattan Beach 90266. Perhaps there is a requirement that a certain minimum number of units be sold before the data makes it on to the city chart. There is no explanation given on any of these charts, so I am left in the dark.

Statistically it would make sense that a certain number of housing units have to be sold before you can calculate a meaningful median price. (This has been my major gripe about the Los Angeles Times zip code charts - but hey, they've got to report something!) The scary thought is that if the housing market were to slow down so much that nothing registered statistically, what are these reporting agencies going to do, publish charts full of N/A's? Since the spring buying season is around the corner, I'm not expecting this to immediately be a problem, but...

In spite of these problems, Redondo Beach data is alive and well. There were no problems at all scraping out data from January 2002. I am republishing these charts so you'll be able to see better the tremendous runup we've experienced here.