The Manhattan Beach price diet: Reduced by $800,000

A quickie from Manhattan Beach Confidential about the pressures on builders of high-end custom spec homes: 560 36th St., pictured at left, has been reduced in price by $800,000 since March, from $2.99 million to $2.19 million.

MB Confidential actually likes the house: "It's big – 4br/4ba and 3800 sq. ft., a good 500+ sq. ft. larger than the typical Tree Section newbie. And though it's sharply modern in style, we've always liked the warmth of some of the materials and the overall flow of the house.... Though the builder thought $3m to start was reasonable, just 2 months later, the price was already down $500k/-17% and the listing was screaming "please submit all reasonable offers!" (Listing price history taken from Redfin.)"

-- Peter Viles

Your thoughts? Comments?

Photo: Manhattan Beach Confidential

Why Manhattan Beach is jock paradise

Tennis player Maria Sharapova (pictured) lives there. So do Dodger Nomar Garciaparra, Lakers Luke Walton, Lamar Odom and Jordan Farmar, Kings goalie Jason LaBarbera, and Kings defenseman Rob Blake. Former residents include baseball's Mike Piazza, Tiger Woods and Shaquille O'Neal.

So what's up with all the pro athletes living in Manhattan Beach, a city of just 35,000 people? From a fun story in yesterday's L.A. Times: "The draw? The same things that lure people who don't know a baseball bat from a hockey stick: clean beaches, a quiet and safe community, an ocean breeze that keeps the smog at bay, good public schools and a lifestyle where long pants are considered formal dress -- if they can afford it."

Other draws: The Kings and the Lakers practice in nearby El Segundo. MB is convenient to LAX, and athletes fly a lot.

Drawbacks: Yards are rare in Manhattan Beach, and tiny when you find them. Homes are built very close to each other, which cuts into your privacy. And if you're one of those athletes who likes to rumble around town in a big vehicle, parking is a hassle. Otherwise, life's a beach.

-- Peter Viles

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times
Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com

Big price cuts in Malibu, Manhattan Beach

Meaningless anecdotes or tips of a trend? Your call.

Malibu: Michael Gardner's real estate blog reports that a home in Malibu Cove Colony just sold for a huge discount. The home, he reports, was listed in late 2007 for $6 million, and just sold for $3.5 million. Gardner: "The home needed some work but has great views of Point Dume, is in the Paradise Cove Bay where it lies protected from the afternoon northwesterlies,  and is in a neighborhood of $5-6 mil. homes that rent for $40-60k per month in the summer."

Manhattan Beach: Price cuts are old news but this one is big -- a million bucks. Manhattan Beach Confidential reports that a home listed at $8 million in February has just been reduced to $7 million. MB Confidential reports the original asking price was "fairly astonishing ... Not modest. In fact, it just didn't seem serious. Smelled like a market-tester."

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo Credit: Submitted to Your Scene at LATimes.com by T Payne.

Westside weakness? One reader sees it

Look carefully at the photo, there is a quiz below.

One of the most popular topics on this blog is the debate over what will happen to prices in higher-cost neighborhoods.  To date, they have generally held their value better than greater Los Angeles, and have not suffered large numbers of foreclosures. That said, reader e-mail from "Someday the Ants Will Eat Grasshoppers":

"Your readers keep asking why the prices are holding up on the high end Westside properties. I’m not sure what they’re looking at, but I have been tracking prices in Westwood, lower Brentwood, Santa Monica (north of the 10), and Pacific Palisades every day for past 3 months. I look at every house for sale under $2M with 3 bedrooms or more, and I look every day. Really.

"Here are the relevant numbers (calculated from my daily Redfin downloads for those neighborhoods and that price range):
"The average number of listed homes dropping their asking price per day: 1.15
"The average size of any one price drop when it occurs: $53,090.90
"The average drop across all 50-60 properties meeting the search criteria per day: $1,017.58
"Ratio of new homes being listed to homes being sold: 3.48.

"So…Westside sellers are constantly dropping asking prices, and often in large amounts (the largest I saw since Feb was $400K). New properties are being listed for sale over three times more often than listed properties are selling. With asking prices for these sub $2M properties dropping about $1K per day, only the very rich would want to buy now. I mean, if you are in that market, that’s like putting $30K per month in your pocket just for waiting.

"People have observed that comps are not lowering. However, the average selling price is about $200K less than the average asking price in these neighborhoods right now. The comps are slow to decline simply because there are very few sales right now. No one (with good reason) seems to be buying. Eventually the transactions will happen, and the comps will adjust. Everyone needs to be patient, although frankly, I wish someone would buy now and then to help accelerate the lowering comps.

"I hope you run this story (or at least selected parts of it), because many of the high earners in your fan club get less attention, and certainly less sympathy, about the difficulty of getting into the market. They deserve to know that their lot will change, too, and their hard work and patience will pay off. Life is fair."

Thanks, Someday.
Now, as promised, the quiz. The house pictured is a 993-square foot, 3-bedroom, 1-bath in the 90405 ZIP code of Santa Monica.The current Zillow Zestimate is:
a) $599,000
b) $714,000
c) $805,000
d) $917,000
e) $1.06 million

Your thoughts? Guesses? Email story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo Credit: L.A. Times

Long live El Porto

Department of Bad Ideas: The best and the brightest of Manhattan Beach have realized their grand scheme to rename El Porto as "North Manhattan Beach."

The disapproving Manhattan Beach Confidential reports that new signs went up over the weekend (MB Confidential favored El Norte as the new name).

I wrote last year that I thought ditching the fun and funky El Porto name was a crummy idea, and it still is.  Long live El Porto, aptly named scruffy urban beach and surf spot, and home of the best beach-shack breakfast burrito in town.

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com.
Photo Credit: Manhattan Beach Confidential.

Small lot, big house

I've seen big houses on small lots before, but this one is the biggest on the smallest: Manhattan Beach Confidential reports on a "Colossal Corner Cape Cod" home. How colossal? 4,934 square feet on a ... (wait for it) ... 4,950 square foot lot.

Here's the listing on Redfin. Six bedrooms, five baths, listed for $3.45 million.

Feel free to use this as an opportunity to share your stories and pictures of big houses on small lots.

Photo credit: Redfin

Goodbye El Porto? Not at LA Land.

Department of bad ideas: Curbed LA, linking to the Daily Breeze, reports that residents of the El Porto section of Manhattan Beach have decided to change the name of their neighborhood.

Curbed: "The new name is North Manhattan Beach: a moniker that sounds very MTV reality show-ready. Describing the area ... one resident tells the paper: "It had sort of a tainted image for years during the '80s and '90s - just that it was a place where people went to drink and party. It wasn't sophisticated, which is more of the way we want to go."

The Daily Breeze: "Hoping to transform a funky village with a dreary history into a cosmopolitan enclave with a vibrant future, shopkeepers and residents in north Manhattan Beach have dropped the neighborhood's long-held name in favor of something more posh."

This is kind of like hearing that your favorite dive bar is closed for renovations. El Porto is a terrific urban beach -- yes, it's a little scruffy, but that's part of the appeal. So is the name -- it has a great ring to it. So, to LA Land, it's still El Porto.

Photo Credit: That's me, and my son, at North Manhattan Beach El Porto.

Price choppers near the beach

Two of our favorite blogs, Westside Bubble and Manhattan Beach Confidential, are seeing some price-chopping.

In Manhattan Beach, try to guess what the next move is on the house pictured at right:

Listed June 28 at $2.899 million
Reduced July 20 by $100,000 to $2.799 million
Reduced August 19 by $100,000 to $2.699 million
Reduced Sept. 5 by $100,000 to $2.599 million
Reduced Sept. 25 by $100,000 to $2.499 million

Westside Bubble, meantime, finds 10 listings in Santa Monica and Mar Vista that have been reduced by 15% or more. The Biggest Loser (and we mean that in a good, complimentary way, like the TV show) is a cemetery-adjacent 3-bedroom in Santa Monica, which has lost 42% off its asking price, from $1.28 million down to $745,000.

Comments? Insights? Email story tips to lalandblog@yahoo.com.

"Buyer Boycott" In Manhattan Beach?

Good morning. Manhattan Beach Confidential reports that September sales are on trend to be every bit as weak as August -- perhaps weaker. There's also trouble in that tricky sub-$2 million price range.

From the blog: "MBC has noted before that there was already something strange about the September sales we have seen – they're all at the very high end. (Five of 7 homes sold were priced above $3m.) That fact suggests that a buyer boycott has already taken hold among mainstream listings below $2m. (That's where 30 of the current 73 listings are priced.)"

Our take: The sample size, of course, is very small, and the more important comparison, when the numbers are final, will be September '07 sales vs. September '06 sales.

Your thoughts? Insights? Email story tips to lalandblog@yahoo.com
Photo Credit: LATimes.

Newly built, not sold ... now for rent

Good morning, again. Excellent post over at the eagle-eyed Manhattan Beach Confidential blog, on a trend that speaks to the weakness of the market in August: numerous, brand-new $2-million and $3-million homes that have been sitting on the market are now listed for sale or lease in Manhattan Beach.

Example: 2709 Oak (new, 373 days on the market) – list price: $2.29m, rental price: $8,500.

On the surface, this is a no-brainer: the market is soft, you can't sell these showpiece houses right now, so you rent them out. But MB Confidential goes beyond the no-brainer and observes, shrewdly: "And yet, offering your new stuff for lease has got a bullish edge. Doesn't it convey that the builders expect demand and prices to recover in the near term, so they can later take the profits they penciled out at the start? An intriguing gamble."

Your thoughts? Comments?
Photo Credit: Reuters