LA home sales booming despite a steady rise in prices, says report

Single-family home sales in Los Angeles are still not showing any signs of slowing down, despite a continuing rise in prices, shows a new report from real estate firm Douglas Elliman.

From April to June, there were 1,806 sales—an increase of 25.1 percent over the same time last year and the highest in the 14 years that Douglas Elliman has been examining this data set, says the report.

The report looks at an area it calls Greater LA, which includes Downtown, the Westside, and Central LA, but leaves out a few large swaths of the city, such as the Valley and South Los Angeles.

Across Greater LA, the average sales price, median price per square foot, and median sales price for single-family homes and condos were all up year-over-year.

Via Douglas Elliman

The median sales price in Greater LA in the second quarter of 2017 was $1.4 million—a 2.2 percent increase over the same period last year, but a decrease compared to last quarter’s median of $1.45 million.

The combination of high sales volume and higher prices in this quarter was a bit of a surprise, says Jonathan Miller, of Miller Samuel, who prepared the report. 2016’s numbers were “lackluster” he said, perhaps because of presidential election-related uncertainty. (Miller says the same thing happened in 2012, when the last presidential election took place.)

But what seems to be happening now is “a release of pent-up demand” that began last quarter and is still in play, Miller says.

Read the full report here.

• Greater Los Angeles sales [Douglas Elliman]