We are just about to say goodbye to 2020 and start the new year. What an insane 12 months it has been. Last year, for the conclusion of 2019, I wrote a blog titled, “The Best (and Worst) Performing South Bay Real Estate Markets of the Decade.” That sure was an interesting data-dive as we moved into the new decade. With the unprecedented happenings this year, I thought we might as well look at how local submarkets performed amidst the Coronavirus pandemic. As always, this weekly blog focuses on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the beach cities of Manhattan, Redondo, and Hermosa Beach. There are 33 unique submarkets to be exact and I will breakdown the
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Month: December 2020
A short holiday week equals a short holiday blog! Last year, I did a “naughty or nice” checklist that can be applicable to this year. That checklist also serves as a fantastic informational resource. Take a look at the 2019 past blog here. With all the wild swings seen in the real estate market, this year’s checklist is a bit different. Below is the “naughty list” on what to avoid, and the “nice list” on what to do instead. The Pandemic Economy Naughty: The naughtiest of them all…the Coronavirus. COVID-19 took almost everyone by surprise this year. It turned our local markets into a wildly volatile marketplace unlike anything the South Bay has seen before. Nice:
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A couple of months ago I stopped doing South Bay home market monthly updates. Just a single month of South Bay housing numbers with seasonality all screwed up thanks to the pandemic created some wild numbers that would not tell the whole picture. Right now, the monthly numbers are demonstrating some incredible strength in the housing market. No doubt, low interest rates and the desire for more space are fueling a housing run unlike anything we have seen since liar loans and the Great Recession. Buyers are in major FOMO (fear of missing out) mode because home prices keep going up and the competition is fierce. I am seeing this FOMO in some of our clients
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As my weekly readers know, I write an annual “fearless predictions” blog for the South Bay real estate market for the coming year. Like always, this blog will be posted in early January of 2021. I have also made it a habit each year to hold myself accountable and share with readers if the predictions came true…or were wildly off. Well, that time has come to look back at my predictions and see what happened. If you would like a refresher on the 2020 fearless predictions blog in its entirety, you can find it here. In a nutshell, my predictions could not have been more wrong for this year. I wonder why? A global pandemic, unprecedented
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The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced last week that it was raising loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. South Bay real estate is so expensive relative to most of the country that we are used to seeing jumbo loans on a lot of our purchases. High conforming loans certainly happen with regularity, but rarely are they newsworthy to our local market. This time around it is newsworthy! So, why should you care? Potential owner-occupied buyers and owners of homes in specific sub-markets of the South Bay have a chance to collect some easy gains. By my calculations, we could see a rise of close to $71,000 in prices very easily and quickly
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