Few people are down and out in Beverly Hills. As home to some of the world’s wealthiest people — Hollywood regulars as well as foreign diplomats with warm-weather pieds-à-terre — this Southern California luxury neighborhood has barely been hit by parts of the housing fallout seen in the rest of the state.
“I have yet to see a foreclosure in Beverly Hills,” said Ernie Carswell, an agent with Teles Properties, a Beverly Hills real estate firm. “Folks here are still buying and selling — perhaps just a bit less casually than they were earlier this year.”
That’s not the case statewide, where foreclosure resales amounted to half of all transactions in September. Following September 2007, when sales were at a record low, bargain hunters snapped up affordable homes and fueled a 65 percent jump in home sales, according to MDA DataQuick, a research firm in San Diego. The surge drove the state’s median home price down 34 percent to $283,000, while Los Angeles County saw its median price drop about 30 percent to $360,000.
Even in Beverly Hills, where sales data is spread over three zip codes, the median home price plunged to $930,000 from $1.8 million the year before.
“Even the wealthy are being a little less cavalier about gratuitous spending,” said Ronna Brand, owner of boutique agency Brand Realty in Beverly Hills, trying to
put a positive spin on the slowdown. “However, luxury properties continue to be highly desirable.”
The luxury market in Los Angeles encompasses more than a dozen neighborhoods, ranging from Malibu’s coast to canyon addresses on Mulholland Drive. Hollywood’s wealthiest scions live in what real estate agents have dubbed the “Platinum Triangle,” an area on the west side of the city that includes the city of Beverly Hills and the neighborhoods of Bel-Air and Holmby Hills. Many of the $5 to $125 million estates situated
in the hills feature panoramic views of the Los Angeles basin, some of which stretch to the Pacific.
Earlier this fall, the biggest sale of the year to hit Los Angeles County occurred when the CEO of a contracting company paid $36.7 million for a massive, not-yet-completed nine-bedroom, 18-bathroom house in Beverly Park.
In October, actress Jennifer Aniston spent about $15 million for a one-story, 9,000-square-foot home in Beverly Hills with six bedrooms, seven bathrooms and half an acre of land. A few months before, tennis star Pete Sampras sold his five-bedroom gated Tudor-style mansion to “Will & Grace” co-creator Max Mutchnick for $23 million.
The number of houses selling in some high-end neighborhoods is down. In September, home sales were down 22 percent over the previous year in Brentwood, the hilly area home to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Reese Witherspoon and Justin Timberlake — but the area’s overall market remains about where it was a year ago. Teles Properties, which reports on about 20 zip codes for its clients, says that of the Platinum Triangle homes listed at $5 million and up, eight are in contract, up from seven during the same time period last year.
Brentwood, Hancock Park and Malibu all saw an increase in their median sales prices, and 41.6 percent of the homes that closed over the summer sold within the first 30 days of being listed.
Like the rest of Southern California’s housing market, the time it takes to sell a multi-million-dollar house in old-Hollywood locales has increased by about 40 percent. However, the less glamorous and newly developed areas just outside of Beverly Hills, such as Culver City, Silver Lake and Los Feliz, are seeing $5 million to $8 million homes go more quickly.
“These areas are becoming more popular than the older, more established ones as first-time homebuyers look for something more affordable,” said Lou Piatt, co-founder and CEO of Teles Properties.
Of course, most folks selling in and around Beverly Hills can wait out a down market.
“Most luxury-property owners have the financial wherewithal to hold onto property and be selective about the buyer and price,” said Brand. “Besides, nowhere on earth is there a more unique climate to enjoy with an entertainment industry to keep our real estate business churning.”