L.A. County home sales by ZIP code

Progress comes slowly, but it comes. Many of you have asked for an online version of the monthly DataQuick home sales charts that show home sales trends by ZIP code. The March sales chart for Los Angeles County is now on the LATimes.com website for all to peruse, analyze, and argue over. I look forward to reading your analysis in the comments section.

Comments

[KateNonymous]

Is that the right link? It doesn't seem to work.

[the problemwithcaring]

links broken

[D]

Link doesn't work, at least not on my end

[E]

I used to read that part of the L.A. Times RE section. It was good for a laugh. For example...my dad lived in 90020. One month the YOY median went up over 100% because a few big houses sold. The next month some smaller ones sold and the median was back down. Go figure.

Median is a joke.

[Corntrollio]

4:29PM -- Agreed. You can see in some zip codes where it was up 15% last month or down 15% this month. Especially when volume is this low (some of the zip codes are based on 1-7 houses being sold), it's hard to see any real trends. No statistically significant items to see here.

[puckhead]

With so few sales in most zip codes the data is all over the place. One zip coded in Arcadia is down 34% while a different Arcadia zip code is up 18%. Beverly Hills is down 25% while Brentwood is up 22%. One thing did stand out; check out the volume and prices in Palmdale and Lancaster. Maybe the banks were having a 2 for 1 sale. You may be able to buy a house for less than $100K in those cities soon.

[Ace]

I always thought this was a useless report. There is just not enough transactions in one month to make it worthwhile.

Santa Monica is up 68 percent year over year! Better buy now!

[GDC]

The price/sq ft is really telling. From what I recall in the SFV, that figure is down almost 30% from 2005 levels. For example, the 91436 in Encino was approximately $500/sq ft in 2005. Now it's $353.

The median figure means nothing. The price/sq ft accurately reflects the state of the market.

[doesn't make sense]

That data isn't accurate, at least in one zipcode. Mine.

I know for certain that 3 condos in my building closed escrow and the title was recorded in March. But the dataquick chart says only ONE sale in the whole zipcode. How can that be?

[sean]

It's about what I expected. There is still a long way to go with price drops before the market reaches equilibrium.

Good time to wait - not buy. A year from now, prices will be another 15 - 20% lower in most areas.

[Fred]

90210 = down 26.2% since last year. Enough of this nonsense about the nice areas not dropping in price. What's also astonishing to me is just how few sales are actually happening.

[xtine]

Ooh ohh! I have a complaint!
When I scroll down I can't see the headers and have to scroll back up to see what I'm looking at.

How's that for a complaint you can do something about!?

[puckhead]

"90210 = down 26.2% since last year. Enough of this nonsense about the nice areas not dropping in price. What's also astonishing to me is just how few sales are actually happening."

Fred, your such a Fred. Brentwood was up 20%. That is just as relevant as 90210 down 26%. It means squat with so few sales. Jeez people, come up with some better material to support your hypothesis.

[Fred]

Yes, puckhead, you are right. But you said all that needs to be said..."so few sales." That's all the material one needs to support the hypothesis of falling prices.

[Uncle Billy]

xtine: copy and paste it into excel and then you can go crazy

[ART]

In some zip codes, you have homes on the market that range from about $350,000 to over $2 million. With 5 or 6 homes sold, it's impossible to get an accurate snapshot of the trend in prices.

[Jeff]

Yes, we all know that individual zips in an individual month are meaningless but the trick is to look for trends and focus on areas that had enough sales to pay attention to.

1) Except for Brentwood, the better areas in the westside and the beach cities mostly had pretty sharp declines so there is no doubt prices are under pressure across the board even in the "desirable" areas.

2) Condo prices are particularly weak across the board (again there are exceptions so don't bother pointing out the outliers). This shouldn't be a big shocker but still interesting to see the data.

The declines look pretty broad based and as always there will be some discrepancies. That is the big take away for me.

[DSL]

San Marino 91108 12 $1,757 35.4% n/a n/a n/a $641

Where's that schmo who was trying to tell me prices in San Marino were down substantially?

[Ragnar]

This report is very helpful for me. Sure the volumes are small in many zip codes so it's difficult to track real trends. However, the report does help me better understand communities in Southern California via zip code. Looking up those zip codes on a map or searching for homes in specific zip codes really gives me a better understanding of what homes are out there for sale instead of just looking up homes for sale in "Los Angeles." I can also see that generally some areas are *much* more expensive than other areas, which helps me narrow my search more quickly.

[Geek Seek]

doesn'tmakesense:

Good Question. It used to be that there was about a 3 month lag in getting all the recorder info gathered. Now, 17 days into April, they already have the March numbers? If all the different recorder offices are able to pass the info to dataquick electronically at this point, then it makes sense. Is this what is happening? Or are we getting some kind of lagging info being labelled "March Data"?

Pater, can you check this? The other weird thing is that I went to the dataqucik site dqnews.com to see what their methodology is currently, and they still had the February Data up for L.A. Times Chart, while L.A. Times itself had already published the March data. Could be a browser refresh thing, but I doubt it since when I went back to the site again I didn't "refresh."

[toby]

Example of why LA has about 5 years before prices bottom out.

90029 (Santa Monica & Vermont)-- $930 Price/Sq. Ft

90210 (Beverly Hills)--$851 Price/Sq. Ft

One is a gang infested ghetto, the other is internationally renown as one of the richest communities in the world, oh and has Rodeo Dr.

That's just FUNNY.

[ajax 3456]

look bottom line

The magic happened, high end homes went up 600% along with the buckets and shacks

Now the owners with the buckets and shacks have to sell or move out into trailers, the rich can get their price, today or in 5 years, 10 years, it does not matter to them and they will get their price.

[GDC]

Toby,

The 90029 includes areas of Los Feliz/north Koreatown which has been skyrocketing due to residential real estate investment by cash rich people in South Korea. The country changed the rules to allow foreign investment.

This past weekend, my realtor friend showed me a 1600 sq ft 2bd/2bth house near Santa Monica and Normandie which I always considered very ghetto. The asking price: $999k. The latest offer: $950k by some Korean national who wants to live close to Koreatown. There are many sales like this recently. The dollar is getting whacked so it's like a 30% discount to these Koreans.

Btw, if you pull the zip code profile on races, in the Westside (including nicer areas of Encino and Sherman Oaks), Persians account for almost 30%. There is a lot of international money propping up the prices of nice areas of LA.

[doesn't make sense]

Geek Seek:

Thanks for acknowledging my comment. Perhaps these numbers are indeed leftovers from February. Who knows.

Everyone seems so happy to jump on the bandwagon, the sky is falling. But if my tiny zip code data is (obviously and provably) wrong -- what other mistakes are in that data for all the zips?

I'm not saying things aren't bad -- they are. But This entire chart is not reliable.