They say all good things must come to an end. Why do they say that? We like good things Now, we're not declaring the "end" of the Spring market in April. That would be foolish. But something has been happening - or rather, not happening - and it's time to report the facts. That gigantic, unprecedented rally in Q1 was real. But by mid-March, it had tapered off. You can see it in the data for new escrows. Our chart here looks at the one-month period between March 15-April 15, and how many Manhattan Beach homes have gone under contract during this time. Unfortunately, this period of 2025 is equal to the anemic 16 new deals seen between March 15-April 15, 2020, which, you may recall, was when the nation had just gone into "lockdown" and, understandably, a lot fewer homes were being visited or sold. This year is 10 deals under 2023-24, and a far cry from the 40s and higher, which seems to be a more typical pace for this period. Maybe there are fewer homes available to buyers? It's not clear that lack of inventory is the issue here. At 68 active listings as of April 15, we're down 3 from last year, down from the 80s in 2020-21, well below the 100+ range seen for most of 2016-2019. But the years 2022 and 2023 managed to have more new escrows with substantially fewer active listings (30 and 45, respectively). So inventory is a little bit low, but not very low, and there's not a clear, recent correlation between inventory and the sales pace. There are a couple of possible explanations here. One is a factor that we worried about early this year, as a flood of listings came to market "early," to meet the early demand, partly driven by displaced families looking for homes in Manhattan Beach. We speculated that the market might be "eating" a chunk of its Spring inventory in the first two months. That meant buyers were accelerating their purchases just as sellers were accelerating their timing to list. Remember, not all - maybe not even most - buyers in this market in 2025 have been fire-displaced families. What if a finite amount of demand was just front-loaded this year? Another factor is one that you see in the headlines, if you're unfortunate enough to pay attention to the news. There is some economic uncertainty out there. Some might say that an economic "soft landing" has been sacrificed to pursue new and confusing goals and policies, like tariffs and trade wars. If the financial markets are uncertain, the future is uncertain, and consumers are uncertain, then home buyers are going to be uncertain. Moreover, some buyers may not only feel uncertain about investing now, they may perceive a future advantage from waiting. If you think the market will turn, you're more likely to wait, unless you see exactly what you want at a great price. In the Fall almost every year, we get feedback something like that from buyers who are in the market - sort of in, sort of not, waiting for the right opportunity, not feeling rushed, anticipating "better" conditions the next year. We're not actually getting that sort of feedback verbally right now from our own buyer clients or buyers visiting our listings. And it would be very uncommon to hear that in Spring. But still, we speculate that a segment of potential buyers is back on the sidelines. It's only logical. So, would someone please fix the economic uncertainty? Thanks. Homes sell in all market conditions, so just because it looks like someone "tapped on the brakes," we don't expect the market to stall out in prime Spring months. We simply don't have the momentum of early this year, or of a typical Spring, right now, as we take this snapshot. Stay tuned, though, because these stories always have more twists. ------------------------------------------------------ Here's the rest of our local real estate market update report for the period ending 4/15/25: > 68 active listings as of 4/15/25 (+3 from 3/31/25) > 52 SFRs (+2) > 16 THs (+1) See the Inventory list as of 4/15/25 here, or see the MB Dashboard for up-to-the-minute data. Active listings by region of Manhattan Beach in this report: > Tree Section: 17 actives (flat) > Sand Section: 32 actives (flat) > Hill Section: 4 actives (-1) > East MB: 15 actives (+4) We're also providing a report on closed sales by region of MB. Sales data, including PPSF for all properties, are organized by sub-region of Manhattan Beach. Here's a link to the spreadsheet: "MB Pending/Sold as of 4/15/25".
