Palos Verdes Real Estate

November, 2020, Newsletter

Dear Neighbor:

As someone eloquently put it, “Who’da thunk it?”.  When Covid hit 6+ months ago, the general prediction for the real estate market was not rosy.  After all, who is going to want to put their house on the market with Covid lurking on the shoes, hands, and breath of potential buyers?  As you probably know by now, and as I hinted in my last newsletter when this was becoming clear, the reticence of sellers to put their houses on the market has created a fairly severe shortage of houses for sale which, when combined with sub-3% interest rates, has caused a level of frenzied activity in the real estate market that is unprecedented since I got into the business 36 years ago.  Another aspect of this is that the assisted living communities basically quit taking new residents last March.  All those people about to put their house on the market and move to such as The Canterbury or Belmont Village (and I’ve got several) now had to remain in their homes and delay putting them on the market.  At this point, there appear to be many more people trying to take advantage of the low interest rates than there are houses for them to buy.   You are probably going to see media reports that real estate sales are down this year, which will likely give the wrong impression – if they are down, it is simply because there aren’t enough houses to sell.

Something that is becoming more and more common in the business since everything for sale is on the internet, is buyers who want to work only with the listing agent and don’t have their own buyer’s agent.  Their obvious motivation is that they think they can save money, and they schedule appointments to see properties directly with the listing agents.  I am not so sure this is as shrewd as they think it is:  as a buyer, you want an agent who knows something about the area you’re looking in, and the fact that an agent has a listing in a given area does not guarantee that.  The agent might be from Manhattan Beach and this is the only listing they’ve ever had in PV, or one of few.  As a buyer, you want to know about things like the schools, traffic patterns once the Covid hysteria is over, soil issues common to certain areas, how to get your contemplated remodel approved in the various cities, and maybe even a little background and history of the area.  You want an agent you chose and who can do things like help you get a good loan.  It is also true, laws and ethics notwithstanding, that the listing agent’s primary relationship is with the seller, who he has known longer (maybe far longer) than the buyer who calls to see the property.  As a buyer, you want someone advocating for you and focused 100% on your interests.  So it’s something to think about next time you buy.

All the houses I talked about in my last newsletter have sold at or above the asking prices and they will all be closing escrow about the time you receive this.  A few of them sold before I could even get them on the market which, in the Covid environment, can be a good thing for the seller.  I am able to do this by networking with the other top PV agents.  I currently have a lovely, well-maintained one-owner home for sale on Via Pavion in Valmonte – 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, a little over 2000 square feet with a large flat back yard backing to parkland at $1,375,000, a great one level 4 bedroom 2 bath home on a big flat lot in Montemalaga just reduced to $1,499,500, as well as a one level 2271 square foot 5 bedroom 3 bath home on Trailriders in RPV coming up at $1,375,000.

Give me a call at 310 613-1076 or email me at [email protected] to discuss any of the above, or anything else you want to talk about.  Also, visit my website www.DanaGraham.com.  I look forward to hearing from you.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2020 at 9:11 am and is filed under Buyers, Everything I've Written, Newsletters, Real Estate General Info, Sellers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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