Reposted from Bloomberg | By James Tarmy | July 24, 2020
In late June, Lillian Lim, an independent developer whose company Sea Society LLC buys and renovates homes, listed a 2,400-square-foot craftsman-style home a short walk from the Larchmont Village neighborhood of Los Angeles.
She’d bought it for $1.5 million in 2019 and done extensive renovations; within a week of listing it for $2.495 million, she had a firm offer. Soon after, a second, all-cash offer above ask came through, and now the house is in escrow.
“I was nervous, but by the time it was ready to hit the market, there was an indication that people were still buying,” Lim says. “My main motivation was to get it out there by end of June, so I could be one of the first houses back on the market. My real fear was being late.”
The Los Angeles luxury real estate market, which briefly threatened to implode with the onset of Covid-19, is back in full swing.
“Even through May, the luxury market was really under pressure,” says Jonathan Woloshin, head of U.S. real estate at UBS Global Wealth Management’s Chief Investment Office. But the June data held a surprise: In Los Angeles county, the number of contracts signed for homes over $2 million was up 34% year over year. “And that was after May,” Woloshin says, “which was down 48.5%.”
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