Micro-Market Snapshot: Mar Vista Holding Up “Fabulously”

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MAR VISTA -- Warning to bargain hunters, bubble-poppers and doom-and-gloomers: I didn’t see much evidence of market weakness today in Mar Vista, where modest-sized single-family homes are selling in the mid-$900,000s. ‘Mar Vista is holding up fabulously,’ Judy Sheller of the Bizzy Blondes told me before we jetted off to see eight houses in an hour (I’ll post more on Brokers’ Caravan in Mar Vista later this afternoon). True, she sells houses in Mar Vista, so has reason to chat it up. But you don’t see any evidence here of sub-prime meltdown contagion. The biggest trend: very little inventory, contrary to regional and national trends. ‘The market right now is not where we expected it to be,’ Sheller says. ‘We expected to have more listings. Sellers just don’t know what they want to do.’ Late last year, she said, there were 120 to 125 homes listed in the area of Mar Vista the Blondes serve. This week it’s 66 listings, and 46 pending sales -- which means there is less than 1 1/2 months’ worth of inventory on the market. ‘One-and-a-half months? That’s a seller’s market,’ Sheller says. One trend in evidence: tearing down ranch-style homes and building ‘Architectural Moderns’ -- the one pictured above, 3425 Greenwood Avenue, came on the market today listed at $2.395 million. Other insights from Sheller: --’If a house is in a great neighborhood, is really cool, and is priced competitively, it will sell for more than the asking price.’ -- ‘If a house has been on the market here for more than three weeks, there’s a problem.’