Luxury housing market has yet to find bottom
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Although the current down cycle in real estate started with the subprime meltdown, foreclosures and short sales have caught up with the luxury market too and are creating a drag on home prices.
Why do you care? If history repeats itself, a strong upturn in prices in the luxury market should mean the entire housing picture is turning the corner.
But some analysts think it’s too soon for that. John Burns, an Irvine housing economist, expects prices in the $1-million median and up segment to continue to drop through next year.
Meanwhile, houses languish on the market for years in some cases.
Although the Multiple Listing Service uses what David Yocum of Coldwell Banker Previews, Beverly Hills North office, calls “a highly controversial method of allowing properties on the market to reset days on the market when an owner switches agents,” there are still plenty of properties that show they have been listed for long periods.
Among them is a Malibu contemporary at 1,037 days and counting. The five-bedroom, 6,400-square-foot bluff-top estate is now priced at $10.95 million, having come on the market at $19.95 million.
In the Hollywood Hills, a five-bedroom “architectural masterpiece” priced at $7,495,000 is clocking in at 935 days.
-- Lauren Beale
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