Lakewood Real Estate News

(12/18/08) by Dave Emerson Note: There is increasing evidence that the Lakewood, California real estate market is passing a price bottom this December.  This post explains one of the reasons I think the bottom is most likely to come during the winter.  In a few days I’ll explain the reasoning why this might be the [...]

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“ECONOMY HAS HEADS SPINNING” the newspaper screamed at me a few days back before I’d even picked it up off the driveway. Stocks tanking, huge firms failing or being bailed out, DataQuick medians show yet another home price drop, and now the “$700 trillion dollar Federal Bailout.”

And we decide now’s the time to tell you it’s a sellers’ market in Lakewood?

Sort of.

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Knowing school district lines in Lakewood is trickier than it seems. In our case, if the home was just three tenths of a mile to the south or to the east, it would have been in the Long Beach school district. 200 yards to the east, & we’d have been in a third district. The lines were drawn sixty years ago, and are a little tricky.

“Lakewood City” was the name of a tract on both sides of Carson west of Bellflower Blvd. Two thirds of the “Lakewood City” tract and MLS area are actually in the city of Long Beach. Yet dozens of listing agents list dozens of Lakewood homes as being in “Lakewood City” when they’re actually miles away from there. That’s only one of the most common mistakes.

When a home’s listed in the wrong area, it’s invisible to any agent who’s searching for it under the area it’s actually in. Yet I routinely find that about 35% of Lakewood homes are listed in the wrong MLS area of Lakewood. You’d think an agent who was going to make thousands of dollars if his listing sold would spend $5 for a MLS map to be sure it was listed in the right area. . . but you’d be wrong! That $5 mistake could cost his seller thousands of dollars, or even a sale.

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Free family entertainment so close to your Lakewood home that you can even afford the gas! Lakewood’s popular free outdoor summer concert series continues through the end of July.

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Today’s home selling market here in Lakewood is challenging, but it’s not impossible. We’ve seen worse–much worse. Like back in the late 1980s, in the months leading up to the first Gulf War.

Back then, buyers were virtually non existent in Lakewood. Today, the buyers are out there, but they have plenty of homes to choose from, and they’re not in any hurry. With the correct approach, Lakewood properties can be sold quickly without “giving them away.” A good illustration is provided by the southern half of one 50-home block in Lakewood’s 90712 zip code.

This past February year, six homes were on the market there. By the start of July, three of them had sold and closed escrow, one had been taken off the market and rented out, and two remained on the market unsold, even as their lender was in the process of foreclosing.

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This is a blog written by two Lakewood Realtors with over 30 years combined experience working with Lakewood sellers and buyers.

Our goal is to give you a front-line perspective on what’s going on and what we expect to happen next in the real estate market in Lakewood, California.

We’ll also be putting up posts designed specifically to help Lakewood buyers, sellers, and homeowners, including a summary of some of the classes we’ve taught over the years for the city of Lakewood’s community service department.

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