Happy Stories All Around For 2017

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Rick Wallace

With the median price of a home sale in Malibu floating around $3.5 million this year, Malibu has seen a boost of 27 percent in values since 2015. Values went up 17 percent last year and will notch up about 10 percent this year.

The last time Malibu enjoyed such a two-year rise in values was in 2006, when the $2.85 million median compared to $2.2 million in 2004. It has been a long time coming to get back to the famous real estate appreciation Malibu has seen consistently through the generations. Many people bought homes in 2015 with a 30 percent down payment. Their equity has essentially doubled in just two years.

Such conditions are exactly what “flippers” hope to find, and surely some of the buyers in 2015 were not intending to hold their investment long. As the year comes to a close, though many other statistical booms are worth reporting, let’s look at examples of homes sold during 2017 in the 90265 ZIP code that last traded at lower prices not long ago.

For example, 18 homes last sold in 2013—flipped this year. The average of the increase in sale prices was 53 percent. 

From 2014 to 2017, 15 homes sold both years. That average increase among the homes was 28.5 percent.

(Of course, many of the homes were updated during the three years, but that is a given. Whenever year-to-year comparisons are made, including for all sales within a period of time, it is factored in that many homes in Malibu are regularly being upgraded. It is assumed in the increase. But does not diminish such comparisons from year to year, as they are apples to apples).

Since 2015, 14 homes traded the two years apart. They had a better result than 2014, despite less time for market appreciation, coming in at 39 percent better, on the average. Thus the “flips” from 2015 clearly did better than the whole of the market, displaying savvy purchase price decision-making to begin with, along with perhaps extra fine home improvement along the way. One home in the La Costa Hills area more than doubled in price. Four others enjoyed a better than 60 percent increase in value, just the two years apart.

From last year, the number of re-sales dwindled to four. The first of them is a house in Corral Canyon that sold in 2016 for $807,000 and this year went out at $940,000. It is one of a handful of 90265 ZIP code single-family homes that brought in less than a million this year, a nearly extinct product.

Secondly, is a French Country style home on a small lot in Malibu Park. It has this sales history, spaced out over time: Sold in 1988 for $625,000; sold in 2002 for $1,275,000; sold last year for $2,050,000—this year registered at $2,745,000.

A home in Big Rock, once sports celebrity-owned, barely made a jump from last year, going from $3,630,000 to $3,875,000. Perhaps the owners just changed their mind about living there? In any case, the same home has had interesting sales histories in the past, selling for similar prices in both 2007 and 2014, as well as the past 24 months.

Most prolific in the span from 2016-17 is the giant 16-acre Mediterranean estate looming above the pier, with three mammoth sales in its history. While all activity with the property has been steeped in secrecy, including the sales last year and this, and improvement activity in between, it found its way from a $33 million price tag last year to nearly $70 million this year, part of a large grouping of about a dozen homes in Malibu that have topped $20 million during the year.

And lastly, within 2017, have been two properties twice sold in this one year. A modest Point Dume home sold in both May and October, going from $1,855,000 to $2.2 million. Quite similarly, a house at the top of Las Flores Canyon got just under $1.9 million back in January. Last month it sold for $2,165,000. 

In both cases, the owners simply rode the appreciation train of 2017. Every piece of improved property along the coast got a 10 percent bump, as a general rule.

Rick Wallace has been a Realtor in Malibu for 30 years and a real estate columnist for 24 years.