In the immediate wake of the tragic LA County fires, high-dollar home sales began happening in Manhattan Beach. It was rare for January to see a lot of sales. The proportion of sales at the high end was starkly higher than normal. Plenty of reporting indicated that displaced families from Pacific Palisades were doing a lot of that buying. Just 6 weeks into 2025, we found that $245 million in properties had gone under contract, more than double the total for the same period in go-go 2021, and nearly double 2022's total. Last week, we showed that Q1 in Manhattan Beach saw nearly $367 million in closings, 19 more than the previous high in 2021. Now we'll look inside the sales data to find what accounts for the extraordinarily high sales totals. After all, the 87 closings in Q1 fell one shy of the record (2021, again) and that was "only" 16 higher than the average for the past 18 years, which was 71 closings. Volume of $8M+ Sales Far Above Average The first thing we noticed was that there were 11 closings on properties priced at $8M or higher. That's 13 of all the sales in the period. Maybe more significantly, it's the same total (11) as all of the Q1 sales of $8M+ properties for the previous 6 years combined. The years 2019, 2021 and 2022 all had 3 sales of $8M+ in Q1, and those are the highest of any years we found. Last year, there were zero (0) sales of $8M+ in the first part of the year. Let's compare years by proportions of sales at various price points, starting with this year. Plan to track the brighter green slice on this chart and the next to see the share of $8M+ sales. For 2025, it's 13, and you already know no other year will come close. But another number is going to be interesting to watch: The "lower" end, homes priced up to $3M, which made up an unusually low 33 of all sales in Q1 this year. Let's see how the prior 6 years performed during Q1. The share of $8M+ sales is just 2-4 in most years, far shy of this year's 13. Sales up to $3M were greater than 50 in four out of six years, as high as 75 way-way-back in 2019. Looking at the next-to-highest price point, $5M-$8M, we see that 2025 was not all that dissimilar to three of the recent years, with 15 of sales falling in that range. The years 2021, 2022 and 2024 all had comparable shares of sales at $5M-$8M. And this year's share of $3M-$5M sales looked a lot like the data from three of the past four years, with this year's 39 matching up against 38-41 from 2021-23. Really, the most obvious difference among all these pie charts is 2025's lower share of lower-end sales and higher share of higher-end sales. A Look at the $8M+ Sales If we are looking at $8M+ sales anywhere, they're going to be nice properties. (Check this post again in about 8 years when that's the going rate for a Tree Section scraper.) Of these sales, 9 out of 11 were in the Sand Section. Because, hey, if you're going to move to the beach, move to the beach. The other two were in the Hill Section, one a new construction home (931 Duncan) and one a large lot for development (644 11th). ADDRESS BD/BA SQFT LOT CLOSED PRICE $PSF DOM START $ SOLD 229 25th Street 5/7 4,300 2,700 $8,299,000 $1,930 274 $8,499,000 03/18/25 215 19th Street 4/5 4,264 2,701 $8,072,075 $1,922 11 $8,195,000 02/28/25 405 7th Street 4/5 4,254 2,693 $9,125,000 $2,186 66 $9,299,000 02/25/25 100 Morningside Drive 6/6 5,366 3,334 $8,900,000 $1,659 N/A $8,900,000 02/24/25 301 16th Street 6/7 6,289 3,611 $8,000,000 $1,340 13 $8,425,000 02/14/25 528 5th Street 5/5 4,218 2,696 $8,500,000 $2,015 N/A $8,500,000 02/03/25 931 Duncan Avenue 6/7 4,910 4,797 $8,945,000 $1,833 109 $8,999,000 01/31/25 325 9th Street 5/5 3,700 2,686 $9,100,000 $2,459 N/A $9,100,000 01/30/25 237 27th Street 4/6 4,000 2,449 $10,495,000 $2,624 157 $11,000,000 01/27/25 644 11th Street 5/5 4,853 14,648 $8,800,000 $1,998 65 $9,695,000 01/24/25 440 8th Street 5/6 3,610 2,702 $9,000,000 $2,271 3 $8,200,000 01/21/25 Just these 11 sales together combined for $97.2M out of the $366.6M closed in the quarter, or a tad more than 25. You might notice just one other thing in our chart. Look over at the date column on the right. Did you see? Ten of these 11 high-end sales closed within January and February; just one in March. We've noted recently that there is some "backtalk" about the impact of the fires and displaced families on the Manhattan Beach real estate market. This is one of the points that's been made... that there's been too much fuss about "10 sales." We're still of the view that it matters not only that a number of high-end buyers acted quickly in January and February, but that there is a whole new audience of qualified, interested buyers looking at Manhattan Beach homes. That's why our take is that, while Q1 may stand out as an anomaly for some time to come, there's still something new and profound that will drive the market in the months and years ahead.
