2004 home sales may top $800 million.
By Rick Wallace/Special to The Malibu Times
Another record-breaking year for Malibu home sales is winding down, while every neighborhood in town enjoys hefty price increases. The average sale price for 223 home transactions through September topped $2.6 million. The median price has risen above $1.9 million, an increase of more than 15 percent from 2003.
The adjacent chart provides a detailed summary of Malibu real estate prices for single-family homes over the past four years. For this year, only escrows that closed before October are included. Mobile homes and condominiums are not a part of the survey, only homes that have a zip code of 90265, whether within city limits or not.
Last year, the average price of a home sale was $2,460,000. That has increased nearly $200,000.
At the current pace, about 300 homes will sell, considered an excellent performance. Most notably, the total volume of home sales may top $800 million. Only two years ago did it top $600 million. Ten years ago, the volume was about $200 million.
As seen on the chart, every neighborhood has trended upward in recent times, if not profoundly in 2004 alone. Some neighborhoods are grouped together, with similar locations and values, to provide more valid samplings. While every block in Malibu, practically, has its own character, the purpose of the chart is to offer general ideas of price levels and trends. Your home, obviously, may have a very different value than the neighborhood norm.
Some highlights from the statistics:
– It is realistic to claim that certain neighborhoods have doubled in value since 2001: Big Rock, La Costa Hills, Point Dume, Malibu West, the beach strips of La Costa, and Malibu Road.
– Carbon Beach, still climbing in value, is arguably Malibu’s richest locale, with astronomical sales occurring the past few years, including one sweep by a noted billionaire of five homes for $55 million (my estimate). Carbon, with overall sales averaging about $10 million per home the past two years, leads the Colony and Broad Beach in per home value.
The summary at the bottom of the chart indicates that volume and sales totals of the past three years have been gangbusters, after a mild year in 2001. The average sale on the landside has risen from about $1.3 million in 2001 to $2.1 million now. On the beach, the increase has been from about $3.8 million to $5.6 million. The median, meanwhile, has increased about 70 percent in just three years, from about $1.15 million to $1.95 million.
This year in particular, activity has been heavy in Big Rock, the landside of La Costa Beach, Corral Canyon, Winding Way, Malibu Park, the western and northern hills, and at Broad Beach.
Meanwhile, the inventory continues to sit at very low levels, keeping upward pressure on prices. While buyers are not as zealous as earlier in the year, seemingly, deals are still plentiful as the year winds down.
One last disclaimer on the chart: Samples of less than five sales may be deceptive and within many neighborhoods are extreme sales that unfairly influence the averages up or down. Often, a sale or two well beyond twice the average has put a neighborhood at a deceptively high level for any particular year. Neighborhoods that seem to indicate falling prices in the past year or two have not fallen at all, in reality. Unusually high sales previously and/or unusually low sales this year account for the discrepancy.
Furthermore, the sales herein represent a collection of information, primarily from the local Multiple Listing Service, obtained from several sources. Likely, only a handful of yet undetected sales are missing from these tallies. Since some sales are reported without a price, an educated guess has been made in those cases as to actual sale price, thus the statistics should be considered close estimations in some cases.
Rick Wallace of the Coldwell Banker company has been a Realtor in Malibu for 17 years. He can be reached at his web site, www.RICKMALIBUrealestate.com.