Belmont Shore home prices sink more than other South Bay areas.

Single-family home sales prices in Long Beach's Belmont Shore, one of the most expensive South Bay enclaves, are dropping more precipitously than in any other South Bay neighborhood, according to TRW-REDI Property Data and local appraisers and brokers.

The average per-square-foot sales price for a detached single-family home in Belmont Shore was $270.31 for the first nine months of 1992, the most recent data available. That represents a 15.5 percent drop from Belmont Shore's 1991 average per-square-foot sales price of $321.01, according TRW-REDI, a Riverside-based real estate information company.

Belmont Shore is an area of Long Beach bordered by the ocean, Seal Beach, Second Street and Redondo Avenue. The 15.5 percent drop in value-per-square-foot was the highest decline of any of the 14 South Bay/Long Beach neighborhoods surveyed for the Business Journal by TRW-REDI.

"Comparing the sales price per square foot is a better method of comparing sales trends than using the average or median sales price," said Nima Nattagh, market research analyst for TRW-REDI.

"But you have to take a look at the size of homes that are selling, look at the streets on which they are built and see how close to the ocean they are," Nattagh added.

South Bay and Long Beach real estate brokers and appraisers said the collapse in Belmont Shore home prices was caused by drops in aerospace/defense employment and by violence that erupted in surrounding neighborhoods following the April 1992 Rodney King trial verdict.

"It takes longer to sell homes (throughout the South Bay) now than it did a year ago. And in Belmont Shore, the homes that are selling are those that are several blocks away from the beach and, therefore, priced lower than beach-front homes," said Steve Goddard, president of the South Bay Association of Realtors. Goddard is a broker with Re/Max Beach Cities Realty, Manhattan Beach.

The TRW-REDI study showed the average size of the Belmont Shore home that sold in the first nine months of 1992 was 1,640 square feet, down from 1,928 square feet for 1991.

People buying smaller homes four or five blocks from the beach could account for part of the per-square-foot drop in prices, Nattagh said.

Home sales volume in Belmont Shore also declined, to an average of 2.1 homes per month for the first nine months of 1992, down from 3.8 homes per month in 1991, according to TRW-REDI.

Belmont Shore has many custom homes of different styles and sizes, unlike the large subdivisions built in South Bay and throughout Southern California in the 1960s, said Dale Losson, a Manhattan Beach-based appraiser.

"There have been a few sales close to the 'strand' (at Belmont Shore) in the last year, but most of them were the smaller homes, a few blocks away from the water," Losson said. The strand is a narrow peninsula that stretches from Bay Shore Avenue to the Long Beach Marina inlet.

Belmont Shore is a difficult neighborhood for appraisers because few duplicate homes exist there, unlike the Southland's many tract-home subdivisions. That makes it harder for an appraiser to find recent sales appropriate for comparison, Losson said.

South Bay average home sales prices(*)
(per square foot of living area)
City                                       Year
                           1992(**)        1991        1990
Carson                      $130.70     $141.32     $142.83
El Segundo                  $221.26     $223.60     $245.81
Hawthorne                   $153.27     $143.73     $141.47
Hermosa and Redondo         $234.14     $238.63     $218.53
Long Beach
Belmont Shore               $270.31     $321.01     $340.17
Central                     $137.80     $144.29     $147.09
West                        $140.72     $144.46     $147.37
Palos Verdes Estates
West                        $254.59     $281.81     $276.23
East                        $198.59     $208.65     $227.05
Manhattan                   $243.14     $247.01     $229.85
Rolling Hills
West                        $250.47     $280.60     $256.61
East                        $237.40     $257.82     $277.20
San Pedro                   $213.84     $167.71     $188.38
Torrance                    $178.46     $186.50     $201.85
L.A. County                 $151.39     $154.57     $157.30
* Detached, single-family homes only
** First nine months

"It's much easier to appraise homes in Rancho Palos Verdes since they were all built about the same time, from the 1950s on," Losson said.

As such, Rancho Palos Verdes is a good yardstick for measuring the effect of the recession and layoffs in the defense industry in the South Bay," Losson said.

Like Belmont Shore, Rancho Palos Verdes home sellers had to settle for less in 1992 than in 1991. But their drop was only about half the amount suffered by Belmont Shore home sellers, according to TRW-REDI.

Specifically, the average sales price per square foot for homes in the southern portion of Rolling Hills and Rancho Palos Verdes was $237.40 for the first nine months of 1992, representing an 8 percent drop from 1991's average per-square-foot price of $257.82.

South Bay and Long Beach brokers and appraisers alike said they were surprised that, according to TRW-REDI, the average price per square foot for homes in San Pedro, a community within Los Angeles' city limits between Long Beach and Rancho Palos Verdes, enjoyed a 27 percent rise in average per-square-foot home sales price during the first nine months of 1992, compared with 1991. According to TRW-REDI, San Pedro's average per-square-foot sales price for a detached home rose to $213.84 for the first three quarters of 1992, up from $167.71 for 1991.

South Bay Sales volumes(*)
(per square foot of living area)
City                                          Year
                                 1992(**)     1991     1990
Carson                              230        388      476
El Segundo                           11         22       27
Hawthorne                             3          6       13
Hermosa and Redondo Beach            73        108       42
Long Beach
Belmont Shore                        19         46       30
Central                             114        175      259
West                                185        334      466
Manhattan Beach                      67        141       79
Palos Verdes Estates
West                                242        373      301
East                                193        290      336
Rolling Hills
West                                 33         43       20
East                                 80        107      100
San Pedro                            12         18        8
Torrance                            235        373      325
* Detached, single-family homes only
** First nine months

The most-active housing market in the South Bay/Long Beach region during the first nine months of 1992 was Palos Verdes West, where 242 homes sold at an average price of $598,836.

Carson was the second most-active market, with 230 homes selling for an average price of $179,669, according to TRW-REDI.

Hawthorne remained one of the South Bay's least-active markets, with only three houses selling in the first nine months of 1992 and only six selling in all of 1991.

While Hawthorne's sales volume was almost nil, its average sales price per square foot actually rose a bit, to $153.27 for the first nine months of 1992, up from $143.73 for 1991, according to TRW-REDI.

Long Beach and Los Angeles residents, fearful of a repeat of the violence they saw in April and May of 1992 following the Rodney King verdict, are moving to the beach cities of Manhattan, Redondo and Hermosa, asserted Goddard of Beach Cities Realty. As a result, sales prices per square foot started shoring up in those three cities in the first nine months of 1992, according to TRW-REDI.