New homes in tree section buoys neighboring homes
The multiple listing services for the beach cities carves up Manhattan Beach into six distinct areas. The tree section generally has a higher percentage of homes for sale that is new buildouts and makes for an interesting study on the effects of the building activity on home prices here. Not surprisingly, the number of new buildouts has had a significant impact on median home prices for this area. The national financial crisis of 10 years ago practically shut down the new building and, as a result, lengthened the recovery time of home prices here to pre-crisis levels. In 2000, there were 167 home sales in the tree section with a median sales price of $820,000. Of these transactions, 24 were for homes that were built within the prior two years. Over the next several years, this pattern of buildout activity would increase slightly and in 2006, before the financial crisis took hold, close to 22 percent of homes sold had been recently built. At $1.7 million, median prices were double what they were back in 2000, while at the same time the sales volume had fallen off by about 28 percent. Prices would hit a pre-recovery peak the next year in 2007 at $1.9 million on declining sales…
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