Just Listed!

3 Bedrooms/2.5 Baths

$997,000

Ocean and endless views from this top of the mountain location. See the Point Dume peninsula all the way to the hills of Ojai. Nearly an acre of private retreat including large flat pad with room for pool or sports court. Approx. 12 min to PCH or 20 min to Woodland Hills. Comfortable 2-story traditional house, behind neighborhood gates in exclusive West Saddle Peak

650 Latigo Canyon Road

1 Bedroom/1 Bath/Large Loft

$799,000

Ideal alternative to a townhouse - so much better! Located 1/2 mile from Kanan. Amazing, sweeping mountain views. Large A-frame chalet with no immediate neighbors. LOFT could be 1-2 additional bedrooms! Plans drawn for two more bedrooms that could be added. Mostly usable half acre with large patio with views of Saddle Rock to the northwest. About 8 minutes to beach or 101 freeway. Very competitive price. Newer home with lots of light, spacious feel. Room for gardens. Parking for a dozen cars. Take PCH up Kanan to Latigo.

Local realty offices hang in during tough times

Almost every company is experiencing changes.

Even if homeowners are scarcely moving from their residences, there's been a great deal of changes among the agents and offices of the local real estate industry. Down times tend to bring interchanging parts at the business end of real estate. Frequent have been the movements of offices and agents in recent times.

The landscape of companies is almost completely changed from about a decade ago. Remember when it was Jon Douglas and Fred Sands dominating Malibu, with about 75 percent of Malibu home sales attributed to their brokerages? Both Mr. Douglas and Mr. Sands sold their businesses, for about half a billion dollars combined, to the company that remains the local leader since.

Coldwell Banker had little presence in Malibu in the 1990s until the national firm, suspecting a boon in real estate, gobbled up most of the local agents with its acquisition of Jon Douglas in 1997 (which had merged with Prudential California Realty two years earlier) and then Fred Sands in 2001. Coldwell Banker has remained the home of nearly half the agents in town, and produced more home sales than all the other companies combined during the past decade.

One Coldwell Banker agent alone accounts for about 20 percent of all of Malibu's business. The top four producing agents in town are all Coldwell salespeople. Still, the down economy and the increased rental costs led the company to combine two offices. About a year ago, two offices under the management of Kim Collen-Ross merged into one. The so-called East office at Pacific Coast Highway and Webb Way was closed and its 50 agents merged with the remodeled Colony office located at Webb Way and Malibu Road. Since the closure, the PCH location, owned by the City of Malibu as a part of the Legacy Park property, has remained empty, though a recent agreement will bring the Super Care drugstore to the location.

Besides the Colony office, now home to about 75 agents, Coldwell Banker has kept a prominent west office at Heathercliff on Point Dume, where about 40 agents reside. That office is managed by Jay Rubenstein, who has 30 years of local management experience.

A similar mid-Malibu consolidation in early 2009 was made by the Pritchett-Rapf company. Closing their office in the Cross Creek Plaza near Radio Shack, all agents were combined into the Malibu Road office across the street from the Colony Plaza, near the news stand. The Pritchett-Rapf company, with about 50 agents, represents two generations of participation in local real estate. The Pritchett and Rapf families combined forces, agents and several offices in 1994. Principals Jack Pritchett and Jim Rapf oversee the operation, with Jeff Chertow as manager.

Perhaps the most famous brokerage location in Malibu is at Cross Creek/PCH. Prudential Malibu Realty opened the modern version of a real estate office there in 2001, primarily owned and staffed with agents previously with Fred Sands before the Coldwell Banker buy out. That location has been in existence as a real estate office since the 1940s, most often featuring the long-time Malibu Realty, now defunct. Previously still, the leader in local real estate, the Art Duncan Company, was housed there. Prudential has about 50 agents, under the guidance of manager Mike Novotny.

The Prudential Company also claims one of the few construction efforts currently underway of any kind in Malibu: The reconstruction of the Point Dume office at Zumirez and PCH. The previous facility was built in 1945 as a sales office for the Point, when only a handful of homes existed on the barren peninsula. The new space will open this summer.

The volume of real estate sales last year, excluding sales of condos, mobile homes, or raw land, was less than half the years 2004-2007 (approximately $400 million in 2009 compared to more than $900 million in the hottest four years). Volume this year is projected to be similar to 2009, which was less than 2008.

The pie of commission dollars, more than half of which is sliced up among the top 10 Realtors in town, is fully doled out among an aggregate 250 local real estate agents.

Many new companies not in existence a few years ago additionally fight for market share, but changes are afoot.

Sotheby's has run an operation in the high-rent central kiosks of the Cross Creek Plaza for about a decade with up to 20 agents. (The site was once the long-time home of the Jim Rapf Company). Sotheby's and its agents are planning a move at the end of the month to an undisclosed location.

Taking over the space soon at Cross Creek will be Westside Estate Agency, or WEA. Their move is from the large office building behind the green car wash adjacent KFC on Pacific Coast Highway, where they have been since 2007 with about a dozen agents. WEA originated in 1999 as the brainchild of Kurt Rappaport and Stephen Shapiro, super-high producing Realtors in Beverly Hills. Malibu is their one other office.

Three years ago, Katie Bentzen and Eytan Levin, among the top producing agents with Pritchett-Rapf at the time, split off to form their own company, Bentzen-Levin. Housed in the refurbished building at 22611 PCH (once the long-time home of Malibu Travel), several agents have joined the brokerage since it opened. Change has come there as well, however, when the principals recently parted ways. The firm has become simply Levin and Associates.

Meanwhile, the brand new Arete Realty (ahr-I-tey, a Greek word that means virtue) is Bentzen's latest endeavor, located at Heathercliff and PCH.

Malibu's longest continuously running real estate company by far, Busch & Associates, maintains business from its location at 22333 PCH where it has been for more than 30 years. Iconic Louis T. Busch was the second of three generations of local Realtors in Malibu.

Virtually every building in Malibu has housed a real estate office at one time or another, and almost every realty office in town has once been something else. The aforementioned Coldwell Banker Colony office, for example, Malibu's largest real estate space, which was once Bank of America before the bank moved across the street.

With about 250 active agents, even in down times, the local real estate business is the number two local employer in the Malibu area, behind only Pepperdine University.

Just Listed!

3 Bedrooms/2 Baths

$999,000
Fabulous canyon and ocean views including Point Dume Riviera. A short distance from PCH. This home is in excellent condition, many upgrades including granite counter tops, hardwood flooring and tile bathrooms. Vaulted ceilings with loft space currently used as an office. Views from all 3 bedrooms. Decks off the living, dining, and downstairs bedroom. Large deck off 2nd level bedroom. Water feature in the front yard, small, grassy back yard. Open each Sunday, from 1-5 pm.

2010: A year of short sales, foreclosures

    
     Flurry of new escrows offers hope for Malibu.
     So it has come to this, a return to 1995. Not 1995 prices. But a common feature of real estate transactions this year may seem much like the mid-90s in Malibu-plentiful short sales and REO foreclosures snapped up by eager buyers.
     A realistic estimate is that about half of local home and condo sales in 2010 will be under some sort of distressed cloud, a property that is: upside down, or “underwater,” where the value is less than the loan, the owner is current on payments but selling it as a short sale, with the bank accepting less than is owed; or it has a current “notice of default” filed against the property by the lender, the key step toward foreclosure; or it has already become lender-owned, foreclosed, known as a REO property (real estate owned by the lender).
     The Malibu market, after suffering a 33 percent drop in value last year, is suddenly in territory long avoided. The last bad market was during the lengthy, lingering recession of 1992-1996. There are differences between now and the mid-90s, however. The sag in prices during the 1990s was due mostly to the Southern California economy, along with over-speculation that had sent prices unrealistically high by 1991. Price declines in Malibu during that period were very gradual, with some homes eventually seeing 35 percent less value during several years.
     However, because not all wealth levels were taking an economic beating then, not all price levels took a hit in value. There were more total sales in 1995 than the emaciated tallies of the past two years. Besides, Malibu's upper end held its own better then than now; the overall averages of that time were only in small declines.
     Contrast that to 2008-2009, which is highlighted by a systemic collapse that is the most unique in history. Real estate has suffered full-scale price devaluation due to a virtual shutdown by the lending industry and a dry pipeline of money flow. Once the industry stopped lending, Malibu faced an inevitable and unavoidable 30 percent to 55 percent drop in values just to keep in line with outlying areas. Every price tier, including beach homes and large estates, has now been affected.
     The state of the real estate market today begins and ends with just one discussion: lending practices. As lenders remain tight with their money, and require exhaustive borrowing standards for even the most credit-worthy customers, values continue to suffer. Particularly at the jumbo loan threshold necessary for Malibu, scant few borrowers can qualify. Sales and prices continue to struggle despite low, albeit unattainable, interest rates.
     So short sales and foreclosures will be popular attractions this year. Of the 41 condos currently listed for less than $1 million, almost half openly advertise such status. The 20 lowest-priced homes in Malibu/90265 ZIP code are one-quarter short sale or foreclosure in variety.
     For those “normal” owners, not in financial trouble, just wanting to sell, there is no separate playing field. Buyers these days expect only foreclosure value, no matter what the circumstance of the homeowner. If a standard listing is not priced competitively with the REO down the street, the buyer will focus only on the REO listing.
     How are values so far, in 2010? There is bad news and good news to report, in that order. Early returns indicate that 20 homes sold and closed escrow in the 90265 ZIP code through March 15. That would put Malibu at a tempo similar to the last two turtle-paced years. Less than $60 million total volume for 75 days of business suggests a winter market with barely a pulse, even slower than 2009.
     Furthermore, half the sales have been for less than $2 million and half have been for more than $2 million. Thus, a $2 million median represents, should that number hold all year, another 11 percent drop in values from last year. At the moment, we have felt a full 40 percent drop overall from the high in 2008.
     (The state and Los Angeles County, now seeing increasing sales and improving values, did not begin to recover until both geographical categories saw more than 50 percent in declines established).
     At the upper end, while a paltry 23 homes closed escrow for more than $5 million last year, only two had done so by March 15.
     The good news?
     Buyers know it won't get too much more opportune, particularly when lending flexibility increases. More than 30 homes have gone into escrow in the past 60 days, a relatively quick burst of $110 million in volume. Additionally, there is a potential stabilization of the median value, based on a healthy distribution of price ranges finding willing buyers lately. Even with a high rate of mortality of escrows these days, spring results look to be positive.
     Furthermore, a long-increasing supply of homes and condos for sale may be ready for a reverse. For example, while Malibu had 79 homes for sale at less than $2 million at one time, now there are only 50. The low end will lead the way to recovery and condos and low-priced homes are already being snagged in quicker times. Of course, it is the low end where loan-qualifying is easiest. More notably, the low end is most partial for properties branded short sales and foreclosures.
     Rick Wallace has been a Realtor in Malibu for 23 years.