Matrix Blog

Los Angeles

Listing Inventory Trends In The Time Of COVID

December 2, 2021 | 2:49 pm | | Charts |

The Winter 2022 issue of Elliman Magazine was published this week and it is quite a beautiful publication. I created a chart for the publication which compares month listing inventory trends across a number of the markets we cover for Douglas Elliman.


[click to expand image]

Tags: ,


Elliman Magazine: 8 Regional Housing Market Charts

April 2, 2020 | 12:01 am | | Articles |

I whipped up eight charts using data from our expanding Douglas Elliman Market Report Series to touch base on a wide array of U.S. housing markets. These charts appeared on pages 280-282 in the 2020 Spring/Summer edition of Elliman Magazine. Click on each graphic to expand.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,


Bloomberg TV 12-3-19: Super Luxury Oversupply

December 4, 2019 | 4:30 pm | |

I got to speak with Lisa Abramowicz on her Bloomberg TV show “Money Undercover” yesterday. She is a great follow on Twitter. Best of all, I sat in a comfy chair.

Lisa mentioned the topic of “inventory loans” that developers are relying heavily on to limp to the next upcycle with lots of unsold inventory. Hedge funds have dived headfirst into this space, even developers who are in good financial state are lending money on unsold condo inventory. These loans are another way that financial engineering prevents the market from healing in the long run. This loan product reminds me of the actions of the Fed and FDIC a decade ago whose policy changes allowed banks to avoid “mark to market” so they wouldn’t be insolvent on their balance sheet. The goal is to sit and pretend everything is alright until enough time passes when everything becomes okay again.

While the interview was occurring, a real estate agent I know was walking down the street and saw me being interviewed via television sitting in a bank window. He emailed me a picture of it with a chuckle. The agent said he couldn’t hear what I had to say but hoped the news was good. Well, it is good news for South Florida property sellers.

Tags: , , , ,


Fall 2018 Elliman Magazine – Market Update

September 7, 2018 | 10:00 am | Infographics |

The Fall 2018 Issue of Elliman Magazine was just released and as usual, I provided a two-page spread showing interesting (my definition, lol) of what is going on in some of the markets under their national footprint. The magazine is well done and a fun aspirational read.


[click to expand]

Here’s the full online version of the magazine:


Tags:


Elliman Magazine Spring Edition – 5 Charts

April 15, 2018 | 4:10 pm | | Infographics |

Every seasonal edition, Douglas Elliman Real Estate asks me to provide a visual market update for their magazine in any 5 of the markets they cover nationwide. The following graphic is found in their latest Elliman Magazine.

Click on the following graphic to see my charts in all their majesty.

Tags:


Real Estate ChartArt in Elliman Magazine’s Fall 2017 Issue

September 18, 2017 | 3:12 pm | | Charts |

Douglas Elliman Real Estate just published their fall issue. I created the content for pages 208-209 and I think it looks pretty snazzy (and interesting).

Click on image below to expand.

EllimanMag

Tags:


Pocket Listings: Appreciating Los Angeles Sales We Didn’t Know About

April 27, 2017 | 1:00 pm | |

We took a look at the pocket listing phenomenon in Los Angeles.

I’ve been authoring an LA housing market report for Douglas Elliman as part of their expanding Elliman Report series I’ve been authoring for 23 years. The report covers their firm’s LA footprint, namely the Westside, Downtown and other areas including Malibu.

Aside from Brooklyn, this housing market is one of the most robust we covered in 1Q17. Price growth, elevated sales and sliding inventory remained the theme.

We matched public record closings with properties listed on the MLS. Those sales missing from the MLS were either FSBOs or “pocket listings.” I don’t have a great way to separate the two at this point but I’m inclined to believe the higher the price, the more likely the sale was a pocket listing.

The chart shows that about 19% of all sales are not shared through the MLS. But even more interesting is the pattern shown by price. Approximately one-third of all sales over $5 million are missing from the MLS.

Tags: , ,


Tracking the Flock of (Ultrawealthy) Seagulls

March 6, 2016 | 10:02 am | |

There has been voluminous discussion in recent years about following and marketing to the high end of the demographic scale, especial the real estate market. It’s been the focus of much of the new housing development action of the past five years, especially in big U.S. coastal cities. The high end development market has been widely chronicled here and within my weekly Housing Notes newsletter.

For buyers in the super luxury housing market, owning multiple homes is less about a primary residence with a second home and more about owning “stops on the big circuit.”

And as the rich own a greater share of real estate, major cities like New York, Los Angeles and London are going through a kind of “resortification,” familiar to posh beach towns or ski resorts, as their populations become more seasonal.

For Manhattan, these birds are rare in February and squawking on all treetops (bad pun for super tall condo penthouses) at full capacity in June.

nytcityhopping

And no, I never liked that band.

Tags: , , , , , , ,


Bloomberg View Column: How Long Before a Home Lists for $1 Billion?

June 25, 2015 | 10:49 pm | | Charts |

BVlogo

Read my latest Bloomberg View column How Long Before a Home Lists for $1 Billion?. This post went #1 on the Bloomberg Terminal and on the public facing BloombergView.com site for about a day and a half. Crazy.

halfbillionBV

Here’s an excerpt…

When a Los Angeles hilltop home that’s under construction was recently priced at a record half-billion dollars, it looked like a one-off in excess. The same thought occurred to me late last year when real estate investor Jeff Greene, who won big betting against the housing market before the financial crisis, priced his renovated Beverly Hills, California, home at $195 million…

[read more]


My Bloomberg View Column Directory

My Bloomberg View RSS feed.

Tags: , ,


[Three Cents Worth #283 LA] How Much Does It End Up Costing When a House Lingers on the Market in Los Angeles?

May 21, 2015 | 10:00 am | | Charts |

It’s time to share my Three Cents Worth (3CW) on Curbed LA, texting at the intersection of neighborhood and real estate, just off the freeway.

Check out my 3CW column on @CurbedLA:

Since Los Angeles is all about relationships and you don’t know me (yet), I thought I’d better get started on my first Three Cents Worth Column for Curbed LA. I’ve been compiling and analyzing data for Douglas Elliman’s market report series for more than 20 years and one thing I’ve learned: there is nothing better than a good chart. For this column I thought I’d explore the relationship between days on market and listing discount and how that is changing…

3cw5-21-15

[click to expand chart]


My latest Three Cents Worth column: Three Cents Worth: How Much Does It End Up Costing When a House Lingers on the Market in Los Angeles? [Curbed]

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed NY

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed DC

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Miami

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Hamptons

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed LA

Three Cents Worth Archive Curbed Ski

Tags: , , , ,


Good and Bad Super-Luxury Condo Buyers Love the LLC

February 9, 2015 | 9:46 am | | Favorites |

llc4

One of the great ironies of modern residential real estate has been the expansion in transparency of information, along with greater secrecy of ownership. I think the latter coincides with the much greater wealth that is being put into hard assets like real estate. Privacy and security are indeed very important to many, including the wealthy and especially those near the top of the financial pyramid. There is nothing sinister or unseemly about the desire for privacy. The use of limited liability corporations (LLCs) has been a legal vehicle (and a gift) from lawmakers who created it that allows people to keep certain transactions hidden from view. However the LLC also provides an opportunity for bad actors to shelter their often ill-gotten assets too.

Louise Story and Stephanie Saul of The New York Times have explored this in “Towers of Secrecy: Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate,” an epic data visualization along the lines of “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” This article is a must read covering the hypersensitive subject of high end real estate and privacy.

The ongoing debate about the dying middle class versus the booming fortunes of the wealthy, the lack of affordable housing versus the super-luxury residential tower boom and municipal governments grappling to keep construction and development moving forward to keep tax revenue flows coming in, have made this effort long overdue.

Towers of Secrecy” is careful not to stereotype users of LLCs in high end real estate transactions as exclusively foreign buyers. Within the Manhattan market, foreign buyers are not the majority of overall high-end real estate purchasers. However they tend to be concentrated around the Midtown central business district (aka ‘Billionaires’ Row’) whereas domestic purchasers tend to favor markets found to the north and south of Midtown.

UPDATE There’s a great recap over on Curbed NY too:
Scandal-Plagued Foreigners Park Millions in Midtown Condos

Here are a few screenshots of the embedded videos within the “Towers of Secrecy” piece.

llc3
llc2
llc1

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,


Bloomberg View Column: The $10 Million Home, Never Hotter

November 30, 2014 | 1:00 pm | |

BVlogo

Read my latest Bloomberg View column The $10 Million Home, Never Hotter. Please join the conversation over at Bloomberg View. Here’s an excerpt…

As the U.S. housing market cools from last year’s overheated state, sales of homes at the top haven’t been following the same script. Prices and sales at the upper reaches are soaring…

[read more]


My Bloomberg View Column Directory

My Bloomberg View RSS feed.

Tags:

Get Weekly Insights and Research

Housing Notes by Jonathan Miller

Receive Jonathan Miller's 'Housing Notes' and get regular market insights, the market report series for Douglas Elliman Real Estate as well as interviews, columns, blog posts and other content.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter

#Housing analyst, #realestate, #appraiser, podcaster/blogger, non-economist, Miller Samuel CEO, family man, maker of snow and lobster fisherman (order varies)
NYC CT Hamptons DC Miami LA Aspen
millersamuel.com/housing-notes
Joined October 2007