A bit of high-end thaw ?

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I’m still wondering what exactly I witnessed at a broker open house in Altadena this afternoon. The three-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot house was just listed today for $1.699 million, and in the span of four hours, about 90 real estate agents showed up for the caravan stop. Here’s a link to photos and some market data.

Just last year, I’d seen houses languish with practically no visitors on caravan days.

Home sales have been picking up in Southern California for months now, but the acceleration in home purchases has been at the lower-priced end of the market. The majority of home sales lately in Southern California -- 55% in March, according to MDA DataQuick-- have been of previously foreclosed homes.

There have been fewer sales at the high end of the market, as wealthy home sellers have held out for higher prices, which many can afford to do. Buyers have either held back because of the high asking prices or because they have been unable to secure financing.

DataQuick noted last month that ‘it appears that homes in older, more costly neighborhoods have come down in value by about half as much as homes in newer, more affordable neighborhoods.’ The Case-Shiller home price index backs that up, with the lowest-priced third of homes in the L.A. area selling for 50% below their peak price in February (their latest data set) and the top third falling in price 30% from the peak.

The open question is whether prices of high-end homes will have to fall as much in percentage terms as those of cheaper ones before homes sales pick up. Many high-end sellers still list homes at peak-level prices, a cause of the buyer-seller standoff.

It’s tough to estimate what the Altadena house would have sold for at the height of the bubble. It was last sold in 1997 for $515,000, but has since been substantially remodeled. A smaller house nearby sold for $2.2 million in 2007, when there was still some froth in the area market. More recently, a larger house on the same street as the house currently for sale was purchased for $1.695 million in March.

We’ll soon enough see if the heavy agent turnout at the open house leads to a sale. I’ll keep you posted.

--Peter Y. Hong