Sunday, August 30, 2009

Venice Drops 38% in a Year

The LA Times today reported the median sales price of a Venice house dropped 38% measured YOY during the month of July to $760,000. In addition the price per sqft is now at $766. This is quite different from not long ago when the median sales price was well over $1,000,000 and the price per square foot over $1,000. With 19 sales during the month, the sample size is adequate. Here are the results:

Venice 90291
19 sales, $760,000 median sales price, $766/sqft

Could this trendy section of LA be cracking?

14 comments:

Clarence Boddicker said...

Venice is an armpit. There was a short-lived influx of B-list TV actors (WB folks, etc...) in the early 2000s but that ship has sailed.

If you bought in Venice 5 years ago and you're still there, looking up the slang phrase "left holding the bag". Ha ha ha ha ha.

blahblahblah said...

I love Venice. The "armpit" comment is true, but kind of gives it a "New York City on the beach appeal".

Unfortunately, if you have kids, you have to add-in the price of private school. The public schools are scary. Sigh, too bad.

Anonymous said...

yeah - and having ms13 hanging out is not great

Anonymous said...

We were looking at Venice, then I realized that the schools were too crummy and the scary gang element too prevalent for us to be comfortable raising a family there.
Some cool old homes though.

Anonymous said...

In the current environment of rapidly falling prices there is no need to lower your standards and live in Venice - more of us can afford the promised land due to the recession
the best bet is to hold tight

There are nine foreclosures coming in the 90402

Only four of them are in the Franklin 90402, but frankly four is enough to drive down prices

The banks are starting to aggressively accept low ball bids, even in really nice areas of the West side

I call your attention to 3109 Laurel in Manhattan Beach
Purchased for $1.375m in April 2006. The bank foreclosed and rushed to sell it - the bank just accepted $568k. A lot of us thought the bank would back out, but no the sale went through at $568 thousand.

This bank bit the bullet and accepted an offer that was a 59% discount off the 2006 sale price

The house was not damaged in any way between 2006 and today. It was the same house, only sold at a 59% discount

In general, Manhattan Beach is just as desirable a place to live as Santa Monica. I personally would never live in Manhattan Beach since it is filled with USC football fans and they disgust me. But the fact is, this bank was willing to sell at a 59% discount

Now the realtors who post here will say that the banks will never accept a 59% discount in the promised land (Franklin 90402) but that is the same thing the realtors said in MB.

The truth is that prices are falling hard, even in the promised land. Do NOT let the realtors bully you in to buying today - hold firm and wait for the right price

Anonymous said...

"I personally would never live in Manhattan Beach since it is filled with USC football fans and they disgust me."

.....thanks, I just spewed coffee all over my keyboard....

Anonymous said...

My son found a crack pipe that was still warm Sunday evening as we walked back to our car off of Abbot Kinney.

Anonymous said...

Yes - that is the main reason to live North of Montana instead of Venice

Venice is cooler and more edgy, but Venice is an environment in which children are taught to do some pretty shocking things.

North of Montana, the kids are not perfect, but certainly they are led astray less than the kids in venice

Anonymous said...

OMG, if you count the kids on the Boardwalk, who may or may not live in Venice, there are some really sketchy 14 year olds. I've seen young girls working the older men. That place is sickening.

Anonymous said...

You haven't seen anything. First of all, there is no place like venice. It offends me to see pregnant 14 year olds smoking pot and drinking beer in public. And the 14 year old boys with MS 13 gang tats all over their body are not much better. What a horror show.

Unknown said...

All of the above is true. (UCLA fans aren't much either.) Still, Venice is unique and a great place to live for those who enjoy the foolishness. Not good for kids though. As the last in the area to inflate, it is the first to deflate. The gang element also is strengthening in the past year or so and that could spell trouble if it continues.

Anonymous said...

Ha - I just saw this on the other westside real estate blog - talking about the difference between one school in SM vs another
""

The difference at Franklin is in the parents. You tend to find parents with higher levels of professional attainment at Franklin than you do at the other schools. For example, Franklin has more dads who are surgeons and radiologists. The other schools tend to have more pediatricians and GPs. Franklin has more dads who are alumni of the top 3 law schools and the other schools tend to have more alumni of the other law schools.

It doesn't make the dads at Franklin better people, but they do tend to be folks who had higher test scores than the dads at the other schools. And they tend to be people who studied harder in school themselves and just achieved more academically.

Pediatricians contribute a lot to society, but anyone in medicine will tell you that on average the surgeons and radiologists are a little more academic than the pediatricians.

''

___

The contrast with venice is striking. I mean you go to a public school in Venice and all you see are pregnant girls, boys with tats, talking about older brothers in prison.

Then go to santa monica and the big debate is - go to a school where the parents are gps or go to a school where the parents are surgeons

based on this i have to believe that venice will fall a hell of a lot more than santa monica !!!

Anonymous said...

SOMEONE ON ANOTHER BLOG SAID THE FOLLOWING
"" If the people who work here can't afford to live here, then what kind of future does L.A have?
""

THEN I RESPONDED WITH THE FOLLOWING
to answer you I would ask you to go visit Manhattan or San Francisco - it used to be that normal professional families could buy a family sized home in a safe area of Manhattan. It used to be that normal professional families could buy a normal professional size home in San Francisco.


those days ended a while ago. Talk to your friends in NY and SF - I bet all of them have already thrown in the towel on living there

Young married couples in NY and San Francisco are honest with themselves about their choices

(1) do not have children, and thus be able to live in a small apartment in the safe part of the city

(2) have children and move to a place that is an hour commute from their jobs

That's it.

Why don't you face facts of the situation? Young couples in NY and San Francisco have faced up to this - go look up the birthrates among professionals in those cities?

It is only in Los Angeles where people like you think they should be able to afford kids, afford a family sized house, and still have less than an hour commute to jobs. Sorry, but the numbers just don't work.

In New York and San Francisco people have been threatening to move away from the cities for years due to the high cost of housing. Know what? Millions of people have moved away but both cities are still very vibrant - the grownups who move away have been replaced by kids right out of graduate school who are happy to live crammed in with roommates.

Those cities are now known as the place for ambitious professionals to move to right out of grad school, live for a few yearsa all cramped in, and then for those professionals who won't have kids, those professionals settle in to a small apartment for life. Those that do want kids move to the distant suburbs

So, if and when you move to another city, there will be dozens of other people whose skills are only a little weaker than yours who will move to the west side to take your place. That is the natural evolution of the best cities - people who want kids move out and people who are happy to live with no kids move in.




AFTER I POSTED THE ABOVE, A LANDLORD POSTED THE FOLLOWING


the West Side may end up like New York, where normal people cannot afford to live unless they are willing to sleep three or four to a room like college kids.

I RESPECT THE LANDLORD VERY MUCH BUT I THINK HE UNDER STATES THE CASE.

GO TALK TO DOCTORS IN NEW YORK - FOR MORE THAN 100 YEARS DOCTORS WERE ABLE TO BUY A FAMILY SIZED HOME IN MANHATTAN AND RAISE THEIR KIDS THERE. AND THEN IT ENDED. IT ENDED FOREVER. NO MORE. YOUNG DOCTORS IN MANHATTAN ACCEPT THAT THEY EITHER WILL RISE TO THE VERY TOP OF THEIR PROFESSION, THEY WILL NEVER HAVE KIDS, OR THEY WILL MOVE OUT OF MANHATTAN.

THEY HAVE THROWN IN THE TOWEL ON HAVING KIDS IN MANHATTAN

IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE MOST PROFESSIONALS THROW IN THE TOWEL ON SANTA MONICA - EITHER GIVE UP ON SANTA MONICA OR GIVE UP ON KIDS. ONE OR THE OTHER

Anonymous said...

we have rented in venice for over 5 years. we love to ride bike to the beach, love the counter culture and crazy variety of neighbors. but we were robbed last friday morning when we left for an hour. I guess we knew about all the robberies but thought it would not happen to us. Venice has the highest crime in the area - check lapdcrimemap -- they don't even investigate/follow thru on home robberies here. i can't believe how overpriced real estate is with no police protection, horrible public schools...RVs parked in front of your house. ...i would not buy here.