Chip Jacobs' excellent story in today's Los Angeles Times about the current real estate market featured quotes from myself as well as a recommendation for this blog.
Welcome to all the new readers!
Here at TerraFirmaLA, we try to bring an unbiased and analytic approach to the Los Angeles real estate market. We do a lot of research with the intention of putting our clients -- whether buyers or sellers -- ahead of the competition when it comes to finding the right property, or selling for the most money. TerraFirmaLA is a way to share some of that research and insight.
I felt the LA Times story gave a very accurate account of some of the dynamics buyers and sellers are encountering in the current real estate market. Basically, no one is happy. Many buyers in the nicer areas of LA aren't getting the crazy good deals they had hoped for. It's something we've been chronicling here at TerraFirmaLA for quite some time.
My only issue with the story was very minor. One of my quotes was erroneously attributed to Burt Slusher. Here's the passage, which ends up with the quote that should have been attributed to me (I have corrected it here):
- In classic economics, buyers should have a decided advantage in neighborhoods in which supply dwarfs demand. Where there's typically a six-month inventory of houses for sale in coveted Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades and West Hollywood, for instance, there's a year to two years' worth today, agent Christopher Hain said.
- Hain has a theory about why all that supply hasn't translated into blocks full of delirious new homeowners. He calls it the "sucker syndrome," in which buyers are nervous about overbidding when nobody truly knows whether Southland home values have reached their bottom.
Said Hain, "Nobody wants to be the sucker who paid too much, so they combat that fear by offering unrealistically low amounts. But if you're trying to time the bottom, you're going to end up with junk. It's always the best houses and cheapest houses that sell first."
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