I just found out the same developer also bought the lot next door to 1605 Pine, which is 1601 Pine Ave.

He paid $780,000, and plans to build a new house there as well.
See my last article for the other addresses.
CLICK HERE

http://www.easyreadernews.com/24892/hermosa-beach-city-school-district-weighs-options/

One builder has decided to step into the pool of development in the Manhattan Beach Tree section…He is the only one out there and he is putting a lot of chips on the table!

Represented by Raju of Shorewood Realtors,  one builder has bought 4 lot value properties in the last few months with the purpose of building new construction “spec homes”.  I am being told that you can pre-buy any of these homes now and have your pick of the 4 locations.

I am told the builder is Willie Campbell who is partnering with Raju on the 4 properties. I am also being told the price for the finished products are going to be $2,000,000 or less.

(I have heard all of this information from numerous people in the business but it’s by no means guaranteed.)

Lot Purchases (recorded in the MLS):

1605 Pine Ave. lot sft.:4,256- 37.5X112 builder paid $800K

2610 Maple Ave-lot sft.: 4,640- 40X116 builder paid $840K

2600 Pine Ave. (2 lots, side by side) 4,480 sft – 40X112 builder paid $ 1,600,000 ($800K each)

If you are interested in any of these lots, in my opinion, I would pick 2610 Maple Ave. because its 116 feet deep, then I would probably pick 1605 Pine. Even though 1605 Pine is the smallest lot out of all of them it is the only one with a west facing back yard, which means you get the afternoon sun.  I would make these picks based on all other aspects of the property (house size, house style, price, etc.) being the same.

Ok now it’s March 2011. Japan is suffering and so is New Zealand. Both from earthquakes. Life is short.
The good news is real estate in the south bay is doing great. Recently we listed 3 properties at very attractive prices and 2 out of 3 got offers over asking and the 3rd one got an offer very close to the asking price. This all happened within a week of their listing hitting the market. Wow. I say that is a strong market.
We all here in the South bay are so fortunate. Great weather and quality of life. We all have taken some loss in our values of our homes but nothing like many other places on this earth.
I just traveled to the central coast and checked out their market. A precious town of Shell Beach has dropped 40 %. Wow.
We did not suffer such a loss.

So as we move towards the end of this first quarter of 2011, I feel that the market will continue to be steady and the value will troll along these prices for a while. We probably won’t see any real appreciation for maybe year or two depending on the property.

A BIG sale for the Tree Section of Manhattan Beach just closed today.

742 33rd st. Manhattan Beach, closed at $2,275,000/listed with Jack Gillespie of South Bay Brokers. ML#S11025456

Description:
Located in the highly sought-after Manhattan Beach Tree Section, this quality Cape-Cod inspired home is truly one of a kind. Enjoy 3,973 sq. ft. of living space in this tri-level home featuring a Gourmet Kitchen equipped with GE Professional & Viking appliances, a Formal Dining Room with a two-tiered coffered ceiling & wainscoting, Formal Living Room and Family Room plus a multifunctional Great Room with plenty of storage for media equipment or the like. The property features a spacious and playable landscaped enclosed front yard, as well as a rear stone patio perfect for entertaining. There is also a 3-car garage, elegant White Oak floors, Granite and Marble throughout, crown molding, designer touches and so much more.

This home was not listed for sale, it sold off market and was posted on the MLS for comparable purposes.  This was a large tree section home with a basement that offered a total of 3,973 sft. of living space. It was built new in 2007 and sold in June of 2008 for $2,700,000; this owner lost over $540,000 (if you include closing costs).

This is a big sale but looking back at the closings over the last 7 months there has been one house close every month (on average) over $2,000,000.  Included in that statistic is 2100 Pine Ave that closed in Jan of 2011.  As slow as things seem to be, there is definitely a demand for newer homes that may be worth over $2.0 mil. There is also a  similar demand  in East Manhattan, as well.

http://www.savehermosaschools.org/2011/02/draft-of-presentation-slides.html

This is a great deal on a nice home in Hermosa Beach (west of PCH).  The house is a nice size 1500-1600 sft. with a yard, on quite street.  The home has been for sale for while, which is no surprise since it is a short sale, BUT now the short sale is approved! Listed at $845,000!

2025 Springfield Ave. Hermosa Beach, CA 90254 LISTED WITH SOUTH BAY BROKERS

“Desirable Hermosa Valley – cul de sac. 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, updated kitchen with granite counter tops, large center island. Beamed living room ceiling with hardwood floor, fireplace, master bedroom upstairs. Two bedrooms down, updated baths, roof, furnace. Full lot, street to street. New front loading washer/dryer. Extra parking spot in front plus garage and street parking.”

Hermosa Beach saw a boost in its Single Family sales transactions by 25%
The biggest change was in the “sand section” of Hermosa Beach. In 2009, there was 83 single family homes sold in all of Hermosa, in 2010 there was 103, a 25% increase.  More than half (12 sales to be exact) were sold west of Valley Drive.  And since it is always a hot topic there were 4 sales on the strand this past year as opposed to 3 in 2009.  The biggest difference we saw was in the 2 million-3 million dollar range, this sector was dead in 2009 and came alive with 7 sales, most of which occurred in the second half of 2010.
The area between Ardmore Dr. and PCH was down in 2010 from 16 sales to 11, this is not alarming to me because this area is typically dominated by town home sales. There are only a few pockets of houses in this area. One notable sale in this area was 2965 La Carlita, which we sold to our clients.  It is a great property on a 9,000 sft. lot and 2100 sft. house, with a guest house and an ocean view.  The house is one level and has a great back yard with lots of ferns and bamboo. The property feels like you are in Hawaii.  It is in a great neighborhood, with lots of high end homes, sale price was $1,345,000.
In East Hermosa there were 42 sales in 2010, up from 39 the year before.   What caught my eye when looking at the data was that only 23% of the homes sold in that area were over 1 million and the highest sale was 1,450,000 for a house that was brand new. On paper, that makes east Hermosa look pretty affordable for single family homes.
In conclusion, Hermosa Beach is still chugging along, up from last year in the number of sales, but values overall are still down.  In the next year or two people will continue to get some good deals on prices.

So here we are January 2011.  Man oh man I can’t believe how time flies.  Most sellers think the best time to sell is Spring and Summer.  Although Spring and summer are not bad, the actual awesome time to put your house on the market is late January.  Here is a small window of which there is practically no inventory and new and old buyers are out on the hunt for a new home.  Granted its a small window but it is wide open!

Then the typical…. lets wait until after Super bowl kicks in.  Yes, Super bowl Sunday is not a day to do an open house.  After Super bowl, the new listings start to roll on the market giving buyers many more places to choose from.

Right now the inventory in most all categories is very low and the demand is medium to high.  We go to our networking meetings to try to find out what is coming out soon so we can prepare our clients (i.e.: do a drive by or try to get them in early).  Networking groups have been the best way to deliver fresh new inventory to our clients.  I can’t imagine a buyer working with an agent who is not in a networking group.  I started our group over ten years ago when there was only one other group out there.  Now there are many groups and most all your top producing agents are in one sometimes two.

This is my blog input for the day!

Lorie O’Connor
00547045
Broker Associate

Manhattan Beach Single family home sale transactions up over 2009 by 15%
We took a look at the closed sales and there was some significant movement in the “tree section”. It went from 73 sold homes in 2009 to 111 in 2010!  This area was hammered in the previous two years after many new homes could not sell when the market crashed. Builders had to slash prices vigorously, bringing down the entire neighborhood.  It affected everything starting with land value. “Lots” that were 1 million dollars in ’06/’07 are now selling for 800K +/- (on average).
In 2010, we saw some confidence come back from the “family” buyer. This started to build a floor in the low end-land value homes as well as the high end.  For example, in 2010 there were 22 homes that closed escrow over two million dollars! In 2009 there were only 8 (two of which are really not the tree section but were listed as tree section homes). Another positive home statistic was in 2009 3 homes sold over three million and in 2010 there were 4. These numbers are significant considering how hard it has been to get a Jumbo mortgage in 2009-2010.
The Mira Costa section of East Manhattan was down about 13% but the “hill section” was up about 40% (35 transactions in ’10 up from 26 in ’09). The Hill section is an interesting area to look at, it had 22 of it 35 transactions sell for over 2 million dollars.  One could also say that 2 homes every month sold for 2 million or more in that area last year.  That is impressive.
To summarize, we saw this was a much stronger year for transactions and overall confidence in the market.  We see the inventory staying at low levels and values holding steady.