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South Pasadena Real Estate Annual Report
If only the Southern California real estate market were as resilient as South Pasadena. As someone once said “If if’s and buts’ were cherries and nuts, we would all have a Merry Christmas”.
That being said, the South Pasadena real estate market turned in an excellent performance in 2008 compared to Pasadena, Altadena, and Los Angeles. I could go on and on. The median price of a South Pasadena property including single family, townhomes and condo’s declined a measly 5% from $815,000 in 2007 to $773,500 this year. Basically a rounding error.
Single family homes were the blue ribbon award winner. The median price actually increased (that’s a word we have not seen much this year) from $920,000 last year to $935,000 this year. An increase of 1.6%. Cue the music!
Despite the increase in the median price of a single family home, South Pasadena does exhibit many of the characteristics of other real estate markets, both locally and nationally. Condominiums and townhomes for example have shown greater declines in median prices and also increased selling times in all areas. Unit sales this year were just a little better than half of what they were last year and prices declined about 10% overall.
As noticed in other markets, the sales activity on homes over $1 million has been pretty consistent. On of the reasons South Pas has performed so well this year is that the market for high priced properties is disproportionate to entry level or first time buyer price points. Of the 80 homes sold in ‘08, 34 of them were sold over $1 million, while only 4 were sold for less than $500K.
The median price of a South Pasadena condo / townhome is almost the same price as a Pasadena single family home. In all real estate market ups and downs, therein lies a lesson. The education learned here is how to avoid a real estate market decline. Evidently the key is to look for a small homogenous community with less than 5000 households and a highly regarded school district.
Tags: south pasadena homes, south pasadena housing reports, South Pasadena market reports, South Pasadena real estate
January 8th, 2009 at 11:43 am
So, what are you saying looking forward to next year? That South Pasadena will CONTINUE to adjust slightly higher? It still has a great school district, and it’s still going to be a small community.
If you ask me, none of those are fundamentals. The fundamental is the income levels of the people living in South Pasadena, and last I checked, they didn’t go up during 2000-2006 housing bubble, and they’re staying the same now. I would say South Pasadena is more ripe than ever to experience a downturn like its neighboring areas.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Tim,
As you know, median prices can be very misleading. I know of many instances in So Pas where sellers have had to lower the price of their home in order for it to sell or maybe it did not sell at all, whereas one and a half years ago it would have been no problem.
I think what we are seeing in most of the analysis I have done is a mix shift. More expensive homes are selling and less expensive homes are selling. However the quantifier is “median”, therefore this is what is talked about.
When there is a 35% decline in unit volume, its hard to understand how prices can go up. They go up becasue the people who can afford to buy are still buying the more expensive homes. Lastly, I don’t think you will see much of a drop in So Pas. The reason is due to very little foreclosure activity as you find in Pasadena.
January 11th, 2009 at 8:58 am
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