Historical prices in one West L.A. street

[Diego Mamani]

I recently passed by where an ex-girlfriend used to live circa 1989-1992, and I became curious about house prices on that street both now and historically. This is a really nice area of West L.A., close to the 20th Century Fox studies and Century City. More specifically, I looked at 103xx through 119xx Tennesee Ave., as reported by NextTag.com.

Interestingly, it looked like prices on this street bottomed in 1995, and were already on the way up in 1996. This recovery took place a year earlier than for the whole So. Cal. area, which confirms the well known fact that really nice areas start appreciating earlier, but once the downturn begins, these areas are late to start depreciating.

The price/SF graph shows a steep increase from 1988 to 1989, and then a slow decay. There’s some noise at the bottom (1995) no doubt as some distressed sellers took substantial losses, while an uninformed knife-catcher may have overpaid. The recovery from 1996-98 is very clear. I also graphed price/bedroom, but the trend is the same. I had no access to lot size or any other data. I included 35 SFR transactions (1988-1998) in this graph, and excluded condos and multiplexes.

[img_assist|nid=5099|title=Historical Prices per SF in one West L.A. street|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=466|height=316]

[bsrsharma]

Why did you stop at 99? 2000 on should be interesting too.

What are the vertical transitions at Dec 94 & Jan 99? Prices doubled and fell by half instantaneously?

Still vividly shows senselessness of real estate “value”. Buy low and sell high a couple of times and with a million $ tax free, one can retire well. Add in the leverage of mortgage and mortgage interest tax deduction, this sure beats the headache of stock market investing.

[bsrsharma]

Why did you stop at 99? 2000 on should be interesting too.

What are the vertical transitions at Dec 94 & Jan 99? Prices doubled and fell by half instantaneously?

Still vividly shows senselessness of real estate “value”. Buy low and sell high a couple of times and with a million $ tax free, one can retire well. Add in the leverage of mortgage and mortgage interest tax deduction, this sure beats the headache of stock market investing.

[Blissful Ignoramus]

Interesting, but the problem with an analysis like this is that the sample size is so tiny. I don’t think you can conclude much from it about the magnitude of drops/increases in the more desirable areas, even though what you see does seem to support what you would expect.

However, I do think it would be great to see more stuff like this, perhaps not so much on a per street basis, but per zip code, school district, or development. That way the numbers are likely to be more significant, and allow one to see trends based on neighborhood desirability.

What we tend to hear instead, things like prices are down X% in Los Angeles County, are averaged over such a broad spectrum that they don’t have much meaning for the individual in a very specific place.

[Blissful Ignoramus]

Interesting, but the problem with an analysis like this is that the sample size is so tiny. I don’t think you can conclude much from it about the magnitude of drops/increases in the more desirable areas, even though what you see does seem to support what you would expect.

However, I do think it would be great to see more stuff like this, perhaps not so much on a per street basis, but per zip code, school district, or development. That way the numbers are likely to be more significant, and allow one to see trends based on neighborhood desirability.

What we tend to hear instead, things like prices are down X% in Los Angeles County, are averaged over such a broad spectrum that they don’t have much meaning for the individual in a very specific place.

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