It’s still cold in Manhattan Beach

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An interesting take on the sluggish high-end market, over at the Manhattan Beach Confidential blog:

MBC calculated the TOTAL single-family home sales dollar volume for the first half of this year, and found it is down 24% from the same period last year, at $140 million. Compared to 2007, when the dollar value of single family homes was close to $276 million, the volume for the first half of this year is down 49%.

The median sale price for a Manhattan Beach house was down 22% from the same period last year, and sales volume was down 41%. This is the lockup that’s freezing the high-end market. Homes are selling when prices are lowered well below peak levels (so far this year that seems to be about 22% lower than last year); but relatively few sellers are able or willing to cut their asking prices to those levels.

As MBC notes, the average days on market for Manhattan Beach is more than 100 days. Sellers are holding on to high asking prices, and buyers either refuse --or can’t afford-- to pay those prices.

--Peter Y. Hong