Hermosa Beach Valley Home Sales Trends

One of my favorite areas in the South Bay is the Hermosa Beach Valley. The highly popular Valley Park offers great playing fields, common areas, and play areas for children. The Valley School has been recognized as a California Distinguished School and National Blue Ribbon School. Homes tend to have between 2,000 sq ft and 3,000 sq ft of living space. Lot sizes often range between 3,000 to 4,000 sq ft in size.

The average sales price trends for homes in this area have essentially matched the trends for the South Bay in general. Home values rose consistently from 2001 through 2007. However, unlike the other areas, the home values continued to rise in 2008 before dropping this year-to-date. The number of homes sold has held fairly steady from 2004 through this year. Most other areas have seen consistent declines in sales volume over this same period. There have already been more single family sales this year than in 2007 and in 2008.

The average days on market trends are consistent with the other parts of the beach cities. In 2002 and 2004, homes sold within a couple of weeks on average. This number rose modestly through 2006, but then nearly tripled in 2007 when homes were sitting for a couple of months on average. In 2008, homes sat for three months and this year they have been pushing four months. The homes currently for sale have been on the market for an average of about 50 days.

Of note is that the average sales price at this time is $1.37 M, which is down from the $1.6 M average of homes sold this year (this does not include one particularly high valued home which skewed the results). In virtually every other beach city area, the current active listing prices are actually higher than the recent sales prices. As I have shown in previous posts, most of those areas experience final selling prices that drop a full 10 percent to 15 percent below the original asking prices.