What's Hot in MB Real Estate (10/8/15)
Oct 08, 2015 10:46AM ● By Jeanne Fratello
It's a given that the Manhattan Beach real estate market is hot, but how do you find the right price for your house? In this week's real estate news, Manhattan Beach Confidential looks at overpricing, underpricing, and how the market somehow manages to find the right number.
Exhibit A is 881 3rd Street (4br/5ba, 4000 sqft.) in the Hill Section, which just closed a deal in less than a month. It had been on the market for about a month in May, asking $5.450M, before going off the market. It came back last month at a much more enticing $4.000M, and BAM! - it made a quick deal and sold for $500K more than asking price at $4.500M.
"Price way under market, and it's like waving a brightly colored flag and saying 'come get it,'" writes Dave Fratello of MB Confidential. "There's a 'leap of faith' aspect to it, but if you present a compelling bargain, you should be able to have buyers compete to set the price."
The time 881 3rd St. spent between hitting the market at the new, lower price and having a closed transaction: a lightning-fast, head-spinnning 28 days.
On the other side of town, and with a different kind of story, is 3102 Blanche (5br/4ba, 3400 sqft.), which came out of the gates in the blazing hot spring market asking $2.750M. But with better-located properties selling in the same range, Blanche didn't find its buyer. The listing quit 35 days later.
Then in July it reappeared on the market with a new agent and a new price: $2.575M. It finally closed this week for $2.450M, or $300K under the original asking price.
For those listings that closed in the fall at much lower prices than their optimistic spring listings, MB Confidential poses an "unknowable" question: Would a given house have done better overall if it had come out in the springtime at a lower price, when there were more buyers?
But it's followed by a more real question, which is something that all sellers have to contemplate before they put a house up for sale: Do you trust the market to work?
Read MB Confidential for the latest Manhattan Beach market update and get your weekly dose of geeked-out real estate number crunching and spreadsheets.
Exhibit A is 881 3rd Street (4br/5ba, 4000 sqft.) in the Hill Section, which just closed a deal in less than a month. It had been on the market for about a month in May, asking $5.450M, before going off the market. It came back last month at a much more enticing $4.000M, and BAM! - it made a quick deal and sold for $500K more than asking price at $4.500M.
"Price way under market, and it's like waving a brightly colored flag and saying 'come get it,'" writes Dave Fratello of MB Confidential. "There's a 'leap of faith' aspect to it, but if you present a compelling bargain, you should be able to have buyers compete to set the price."
The time 881 3rd St. spent between hitting the market at the new, lower price and having a closed transaction: a lightning-fast, head-spinnning 28 days.
Then in July it reappeared on the market with a new agent and a new price: $2.575M. It finally closed this week for $2.450M, or $300K under the original asking price.
For those listings that closed in the fall at much lower prices than their optimistic spring listings, MB Confidential poses an "unknowable" question: Would a given house have done better overall if it had come out in the springtime at a lower price, when there were more buyers?
But it's followed by a more real question, which is something that all sellers have to contemplate before they put a house up for sale: Do you trust the market to work?
Read MB Confidential for the latest Manhattan Beach market update and get your weekly dose of geeked-out real estate number crunching and spreadsheets.
