From the department of unsurprising – and yet still shocking – news, we have this update.
Manhattan Beach real estate hit an all-time high for median home prices in 2014: $1,900,000.
Maybe you saw a new peak coming? Still, the data are pretty incredible.
The rocket-fueled jump from only the prior year,…
From the department of unsurprising – and yet still shocking – news, we have this update.
Manhattan Beach real estate hit an all-time high for median home prices in 2014: $1,900,000.
Maybe you saw a new peak coming? Still, the data are pretty incredible.
The rocket-fueled jump from only the prior year, 2013, was an amazing 17%. (Well, 16.7% to be exact.)
That 17% year-over-year figure suggests monthly home price appreciation of 1.4%.
Some other angles to see in these data about our booming market:
- The MB median price is up 34% in just 2 years;
- The median price jumped exactly $500K since 2010;
- From recent trough (2009) to current peak, the median price is up 38%; and
- This new record high median price bests the prior, 2007 peak, by 11.7%.
All of these data come from MLS-reported sales of all residential properties in MB in the years 2004-2014. That means SFRs, townhomes and condos, in all parts of the city (west and east of Sepulveda). Here's the full run of data going back the full 11 years:
Now, the story is slightly less dramatic if we look only at data for SFRs, although the new peak set in 2014 is a bit higher at $1,910,000:
Here at MBC, we do tend to prefer to compare SFR data because there are fewer quirks to the data than the complete set with condos and townhomes.
An example: The 2013 median price for SFRs was $1,725,000, or nearly $100K higher than the median for all properties citywide.
That means the jump year-over-year to 2014 was less dramatic: 11% year-over-year, instead of 17%. (Or, really, 10.7% instead of 16.7%.)
The jump in SFR median prices for the 2 years from 2012-2014 was "only" 31%, less than the 34% seen in the data for all properties.
And finally, while the 2014 median price figure is a new high for MB, it's up "only" 7.6% over the 2007 peak, not the 11.7% jump seen in the broader data set.
These caveats, though, don't take much away from the big picture:
- 2014 saw huge jumps even from 2013's high heights;
- 2014 carved out new peak median prices for MB, no matter how you slice the data; and
- Even the most "conservative" cut of data suggests monthly price appreciation of about 1.3%.
The last time we looked at comparative median price data, it was in September 2014. We were mainly focused on trough-to-peak comparisons. (See "How Prices Have Bounced Since '09.")
At that time, we found median prices were up 26-29% from 2009. However, anecdotal cases of same-house sales were showing much higher price increases: 43%-64%.
The lesson there: Whatever the median price trends are, you'll often find a different story with individual properties.
Now, everyone wants to know if this kind of appreciation we are seeing is sustainable.
All we really know is that the past 2 years have been a heck of a rally, and there are some interesting fundamentals driving it: Among them would be low inventory, ongoing ultra-low interest rates and – more amorphously, but still importantly – the arrival of buyers bringing even higher levels of wealth and income than those who came before.
Obviously, 15%+ per year appreciation cannot continue indefinitely, and maybe not for long. But something in those fundamentals would need to change before we might expect a slowdown.
------------------------------------
Nerdy note: All sales data and median prices were checked and re-checked, including removal of duplicate sales entries in the various data sets that could have changed median prices. Yes, we really do flyspec the datasets that carefully.
Please see our blog disclaimer.
Listings presented above are supplied via the MLS and are brokered by a variety of agents and firms, not Dave Fratello or Edge Real Estate Agency, unless so stated with the listing. Images and links to properties above lead to a full MLS display of information, including home details, lot size, all photos, and listing broker and agent information and contact information.