Huntington Beach, three-bedroom, two-bath house listed for $739,000
Prices at the high end of the real estate market have been slower to fall, but they are falling. The Standard and Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which tracks home values by price ranges, shows that Los Angeles-area homes priced in the top third of the market -- $750,000 and above -- have fallen 23% from their 2006 peak. The bottom third, by contrast, has taken a 44% hit from the 2006 peak.
The $750,000 price level may not be loaded with screaming bargains, but buyers might now be able get into neighborhoods that were off-limits at that price during the boom. Like the beach.
This 1,688-square-foot house, 10 blocks from the beach, is in escrow for a bit under $725,000, said Bill Cuppy, the listing agent. Several comparably sized houses in the neighborhood sold for more than $900,000 in 2006 and 2007, records show.
Cuppy said this house got no reasonable offers when it had been priced for three months at $789,000. Two solid offers came in when the seller dropped the price to $739,000 in November.
The house was a short sale, and the lender has agreed to a price below the current owner's mortgage amount, Cuppy said. The house had sold for $835,000 in 2005, public records show.
At least a dozen houses are listed for between $700,000 and $800,000 in the same ZIP Code; about half are short sales.
$1 million
La Canada, four-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bath house, listed for $1,029,000
This four-bedroom, 2,510-square-foot ranch house was listed in April for $1.295 million. In July the seller cut the price by $100,000. Another $100,000 cut followed in September. In October, the seller made a more modest $16,000 reduction, bringing the price to $1,079,000. On Wednesday, the price came down to $1,029,000.
Another, slightly smaller house on the same street is now listed at $995,000. Its asking price had been $1.249 million in June.
With its high-performing school district and location close to both downtown and the Burbank studios, La Canada's property values reflect its desirability for high-income families.
The median single-family home sales price in 2008 so far is $1.1 million, according to the real estate information service MDA DataQuick.
At least eight La Canada houses have sold for between $950,000 and $1.25 million in the last three months, half of them under 2,000 square feet and none with more than four bedrooms.
Get outside of the long-established wealthy neighborhoods, to areas where seven figures marks the high end of the range rather than the middle, and the same money can buy double the space.
In Encino and Woodland Hills, houses near 4,000 square feet are listed for about $1 million, and there might even be room to negotiate.
Similarly fancy digs in Walnut or Orange County's Ladera Ranch are listed in that range and languishing.
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