By JILL ROSENFELD
Staff Reporter
The amount of time it takes to sell a home in Los Angeles County has shrunk to a median of just 34 days the shortest time period since the real estate industry began tracking such figures in 1987.
The median the point at which half the homes take more time to sell, and half the homes take less was 49 days for the first quarter of 1998, according to G.U. Krueger, economist for the California Association of Realtors.
That figure sank to 39 days in April, and 34 days in May, Krueger said meaning prices will likely continue to escalate.
“It’s moving fast, very fast,” said Krueger. “We are definitely approaching the speed limit.”
By way of comparison, the median time was 45 days in the third quarter of 1988, the second-fastest buying rate since CAR began keeping records.
That buying spree kicked off a major run-up in prices, which hit their peak in 1991 with the median L.A. County home selling for about $230,000.
Prices are still far below that level, but they’re beginning to catch up. In May, the median price for a single-family home in L.A. County was $186,580, up 8 percent from the same month last year.
“The person who owns the house has all the power. They can do whatever they want, and ask whatever they want for it. It’s really out of control,” said Lisa Benarouche, who lost out on five different deals before signing the papers on a Hancock Park home the same day she toured it even before her husband had seen the property.
“He was in New York,” Benarouche explained. “I said, ‘I’m going to write the check right now.’ It’s insane. You have no time to show it to your family.”
Finding a suitable home in the current market is no simple matter. Multiple offers above the asking price are standard. Houses are being snapped up well before they are shown to the public at open houses. Prospective buyers now routinely accompany their agents on brokers’ “caravans,” which traditionally have been when Realtors first tour the homes.
John Aaroe & Associates agent Linda Turner listed a house on a Monday, and held the brokers’ caravan on Tuesday in the pouring rain. “We thought no one would show up,” she said. “It was sold by noon.”
Brad Ottomeyer, a retail sales manager who recently bought a home in Sherman Oaks, said houses in that community were disappearing so fast that “if it went to an open house, frankly, it meant that it was not a good house.”
The quick pace of home sales has also made it impractical to buy homes on contingency, as Helen and Craig Young found out when they made a bid on a four-bedroom house in Manhattan Beach.
Their offer was contingent on them selling their current home. By the time the Youngs sold their old house, they learned they had been outbid on the four-bedroom house they wanted by $29,000.
“We were in sort of panic mode,” said Helen Young, 36, an advertising executive for Ketchum Communications. “Having sold our house, we were afraid prices would continue to skyrocket and we’d find ourselves priced out of the market in a relatively short period of time.”
Indeed, over the course of the year the Youngs spent shopping for a home, they decided to raise their target price from $550,000 to upwards of $700,000.
Having outgrown their two-bedroom, they were looking for a place that could accommodate not only their present family, but also possibly a second child, as well as an office for Craig, who works as a freelance director of corporate videos for Japanese car companies in the South Bay.
After they were outbid on their first choice for a home, Craig Young scoured the area in which they wanted to live, and wrote down the addresses of 50 homes that were not on the market but that would be within the Youngs’ price range.
He then composed a letter directed to all residents in the area, describing his family’s predicament and requesting that if anyone was looking to sell their home, to please contact the Youngs.
That letter produced a spate of friendly phone calls, one of which came from the owner of the house they eventually bought.
“It was everything we had been looking for, and more,” said Craig. A Mediterranean-style house, it had four bedrooms and more than twice the square footage of their original home. It had a tile floor, a master suite overlooking the back, with a fireplace, sitting area and marble bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub. The backyard patio was elevated, with a built-in barbecue and a fountain.
After viewing the house, the now-savvy Youngs immediately put in an offer at the asking price of $679,000, and gave the owners two days no longer to make up their minds. They accepted, and the Youngs got their home.
“Experience has to teach them how aggressive they have to be,” said Fred Sands Realtors broker Lois Bostwick. “Sometimes buyers have to lose two or three deals before they figure out what they have to do to win.”
