How’s the Market in Playa Vista?

It doesn’t take a real estate expert to tell you the past year and a half has been unlike any other. The pandemic has dominated the world and the real estate markets have followed our personal changes in adapting to the challenges. Things started getting really scary with Covid last March and lockdowns and fear caused the market to briefly come to a near complete stop. Within a couple of months, people learned how to return to life and showing property in a somewhat safe manner, including social distancing. This put a premium on private spaces and less of a demand for convenient locations, especially ones with shared amenities and caused the single family market to rise, especially in more suburban areas, and the condo market in the cities to fall behind. Earlier this year, vaccines rolled out and things opened up and we thought the pandemic was over, so condos started bouncing back. Now, with the recent Delta variant surge, we are realizing this disease and certain life changes are something we’re going to have to deal with for a while. This post is about real estate markets have followed these patterns.

Once real estate began to transact again last May, it was clear that condos were not in high demand. Most people did not want to be sharing elevators or common amenities and many desired more space for work or schooling from home than they previously had needed. Fortunately supply never spiked, but 2020 saw declines in value of approximately 5-10% in many Westside areas. Demand did not decline, however, it increased and single family homes were the main beneficiary. Single family homes saw median increases of value in 2020 of 15% or more in many markets throughout California and much more than that in some other markets.

In early 2021, as vaccines rolled out and restrictions eased, the desire for more space for work/school from home and convenient, established location came together and created a strong demand for larger condos and detached homes in Playa Vista. With kids going back to school in person a reality, condos in more central areas began to bounce back. Through June, the median price in Playa Vista is up 18.3% year over year, which can be largely attributed to larger homes selling for more. Values for smaller condos, while doing better overall in 2021, are virtually flat overall for the past two years.

With the competitiveness of the single family housing over the past year, supply of condos in Playa Vista has stayed fairly low because there are simply very few places where one can move. At the time of this writing, there are only 17 active properties on the market (single family and condo) in Playa Vista, which is extremely low. Additionally, a good number of the people selling are moving out of the area or selling second homes/investment properties. If the single family market slows down and supply increases, look for supply to increase quickly in Playa Vista as many of these owners who are looking to move up are finally able to.

The Delta variant surge that started in late June has yet to have a noticeable impact on the real estate market. People are being more careful in an attempt to protect younger children who are not vaccinated, but this has largely not played into real estate decisions, or at least not yet. Chances are, the effects will be minimal on demand as the population gets used to these surges and most adults and those at high risk have been vaccinated or have access to it making severe illness from Covid less likely.