HIGH END HOME SALES SURGING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Business Finance Travel Real Estate Sales
LA Times
“By most measures, the housing market these days is a bit sluggish. Prices are flat. Sales are drooping. A lot of people are priced out.
But not everyone. The high end is hopping.
Luxury home sales in Southern California are hitting levels not seen in decades. The number of homes bought for $2 million or more in recent months is the highest on record. Sales worth $10 million or more are on pace this year to double their number from the heights of the housing bubble.
“It’s pretty mind-blowing, to be honest,” said Cindy Ambuehl, an agent with the Partners Trust in Brentwood. “The luxury market has been completely on fire.”
Low interest rates, a strong stock market and waves of cash sloshing in from overseas are boosting demand for high-dollar homes.
“It’s just a completely different story between the two segments of the market,” she said. “Those who are doing well are doing really well.”
The biggest difference in the luxury market between now and a decade ago is that the world is smaller, said Drew Fenton, an agent who specializes in high-end homes at Hilton & Hyland in Beverly Hills. Wealthy international buyers are scooping up second homes, investment properties and safe havens for their cash. And it’s easier for them to scout — and travel — the world to do so.
“Everything’s just more global now,” he said. Ten years ago “it was much harder to reach those people and they didn’t travel as much.”
Now they are, and so are the agents who cater to them. Sandra Miller, a broker at Volker & Engels in Santa Monica, last week was jet-lagged from a trip to London, where she met with nearly two dozen brokerages that represent high-end buyers. At the end of the month, she’s off to Kuwait. Every week, she has a conference call with international agents.
The Southland scores points with these buyers for its weather, its glamour and a population diverse enough that nearly any transplant can feel at home. And despite its reputation as one of the nation’s least-affordable housing markets, Los Angeles can look like a steal compared with other high-end havens.
“We talk to private wealth managers around the world who think California is a very good market right now,” Miller said. “Compared to New York or London, L.A. real estate is a bargain.”
In San Diego, it’s not uncommon for sellers of homes priced at $2 million to $3 million to get offers within 30 days—unheard of a year or two ago, says Andrew E. Nelson, president and CEO of Willis Allen Real Estate.
Luxury buyers also are starting to skew younger, such as tech entrepreneurs and other wealthy shoppers in their 20s and 30s. They’re looking for different kinds of homes — often with more outdoor space — and in different neighborhoods. It’s predicted that they’ll be driving up the high end of the market for a long time.”
Although the excerpts from this article primarily highlight what’s going on in and around LA, we’ve been seeing evidence of this in RSF, and many areas of San Diego for quite awhile now, reinforcing the premise that, unlike in past decades, global competition for jobs, homes, etc., is growing more prevalent every day. It will definitely be interesting to see where things go from here.
