Median home prices in Venice are rapidly approaching $2 million

Entering 2017, home prices in Venice are continuing to soar, with median sale prices now approaching $2 million, according to a quarterly report from real estate firm Douglas Elliman.

The report puts median prices in the beach community at $1.978 million; that’s up nearly six percent from the previous quarter and over 15 percent since the final months of 2015, when the median price for a single-family home was a paltry $1.782 million.

Those numbers confirm the neighborhood’s status as one of the priciest in the nation. For comparison’s sake, the median sale price in Manhattan fell to $1.05 million this past quarter. And while that borough continues to blow Venice away in terms of price per square foot, condos in Venice are now selling for per-square-foot prices that are nearly equivalent to those in Brooklyn.

Average prices in Venice are even more eye-popping. After rising more than 20 percent since the year before, the area’s average sale price stood at $2.439 million by the close of 2016. Meanwhile, sale prices in Downtown Los Angeles and the Westside (which Douglas Elliman has gerrymandered into its own submarket) averaged $1.666 million, with a median sale price of $1.03 million.

Neighboring Mar Vista, which has also been inundated with a flood of tech money in recent years, has seen its own gains in sale prices. Median sale price rose to $1.49 million in the final quarter of 2016, up from $1.275 million a year earlier.

How long prices in the beachfront neighborhoods will continue to rise is unclear. Across LA, the overall number of sales dropped significantly in 2016. So far, though, that hasn’t stopped sale prices from climbing.

• 4Q California Sales [Douglas Elliman]
• Los Angeles County home prices dip to $520,000 [Curbed LA]
• Mapping LA’s hottest neighborhoods among homebuyers [Curbed LA]
• Will Snapchat employees rush to buy homes in Venice? [Curbed LA]