Taking the Pulse on the Westside Market
February 26th, 2008 Categories: Bel Air - Holmby Hills, Beverly Hills - BHPO, Brentwood, Cheviot Hills - Rancho Park, Culver City, Hollywood Hills, Malibu, Marina Del Rey - Venice, Pacific Palisades, Real Estate, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Westwood - Century City
Here’s a little inside scoop on what’s happening in our market. I won’t bore you with tons of detail but it’ll keep you posted on the latest happenings. It’s your chance to be a fly on the wall in the most powerful real estate office near and far…
The market is moving. In the last 2 weeks, our office has had more escrows opening than in the previous 30 days combined. REOs are making up about 10% of that volume- which means a solid 90% of the deals are NOT REOs, just regular sales. Last week our office has 16 closings, ranging in price from $300,000 to over $14,000,000. People are buying and writing offers for well-priced homes. We are seeing multiple offer situations every week.
 The reason why it matters what our office is doing is because we have a very strong group of agents that work in every area of the Westside. It’s a good place to look to gauge overall market activity.Â
General concensus is that we don’t have enough good, “done” homes for sale. We aren’t seeing a build-up of inventory of homes in most areas. Homes are selling off the market, before the first open house. Homes are even selling when the for-sale sign is being nailed into the front yard (as happened with one home in the Beverly Hills Flats recently). Â
During Caravan today, I saw people crawling all over a home under $700,000 in West LA. It was an adorable place but wedged between 2 apartment buildings- and had apartment buildings across the street. It didn’t matter to all the buyers there ready to jump on a nice well-priced home. The house will have multiple offers and the owner is going to review all offers next Monday.
Another popular home today was a lovely Spanish in the Beverly Hills Flats over $9,600,000 on a 12,000 sq ft lot. Not an ounce of wasted space- it had a gorgeous outdoor entertainment area in the front, koi pond, pool area and 2-story guest house with an office, bedroom with bath, exercise room with bath.  A hefty price for a lot of that size but the home is incredible.Â
Summary: People are buying but the home has to have value and must be priced aggressively.  Â
Risky theme. I think you’ve hurt someone’s feelings, but what’s for me - I like it. No matter what they say if your opinion