The Housing Market in Most of Los Angeles is Setting All Kinds of Record Highs

The housing market is hitting record levels of craziness in much of Los Angeles. Ever-rising housing prices are kind of a given in Los Angeles now, but for a while, they seemed to be discouraging a lot of people from actually buying—the number of sales stayed flat or fell as prices rose. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Real estate firm Douglas Elliman's latest market report paints a picture of a booming for-sale market (for sellers, at least): everything is busting record highs, from average sale prices across the board (condos and single-family houses) to the number of sales closed, which rose to the highest second-quarter total in a decade. Prices were up 4.8 percent, the number of sales was up 6.5 percent, and houses were sitting on the market an average of just five days.

The report—which looks at "greater LA," including the Westside, coastal 'hoods, Downtown, and Northeast LA (but not South LA)—finds record prices across the board. The overall market and just single-family houses alone saw record median and average prices; the condo market saw a record median sales price ($675,000). Median sales price across the board was $938,000 and well over a million for houses, at $1,371,500.

In Downtown, the median sales price for condos was up 7.3 percent from last quarter, to $601,000. In Beverly Hills Post Office, the median sales price hit $2.785 million—a new record and a 60.6 percent rise from earlier this year. There were a few places where sales prices dropped a bit: in the Sunset Strip and the Hollywood Hills area above it, the average and median sales prices dropped 10.7 and 4.2 percent, respectively. Don't worry about them, though. The average sales price there was still $2,226,785, and the median was $1.642 million.

Meanwhile, the total number of sales increased 6.5 percent to 2,865. In Century City/Westwood, single-family sales were up 42.6 percent (to 38) and condo sales rose to 174, an increase of 58.2 percent. In Brentwood, single-family sales more than doubled to 67. This is not about a few ridiculously high sales "skewing the numbers higher," says report preparer Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel. The rise in sales that we started to see last quarter combined with "no real shift in inventory" has kept demand high. According to the report, the overall listing inventory rose just 7.4 percent from last quarter, up to 2,557. So if you're looking to buy a house right now, "you've got company," says Miller.

· 2Q - 2015 Greater Los Angeles Sales [Douglas Elliman]
· People Are Starting to Buy Houses in Los Angeles Again [Curbed LA]