It’s not easy to find Santa Monica dirt right now.

Excluding Santa Monica Canyon, presently, there are only 14 houses available to purchase North of Montana Ave. The list prices range from $4.5M to nearly $60M, 14 houses! Talk about a tight market! Is it the golden handcuffs of a low interest rate keeping owners from selling? Or could it be that there is no place one would rather live than North Santa Monica? Or are the taxes associated with selling so high that owners are just staying put? Probably all of the above, no? As I wrote about in my last piece, coming soon to the market are at least four newly built homes that will be priced starting in the $9M’s and go all the way to $13M.

A New High-Rise In Santa Monica?

There may be a new high rise apartment building project with 172 new units built on 6th Street in Santa Monica, near Santa Monica Blvd. Madison Realty Capital just rolled out the design for the 18-story apartment building at 1433-1437 6th Street, according to Urbanize Los Angeles.

The design, shared online and at a community meeting, shows a 185-foot tower going up between Broadway and Santa Monica Boulevard, replacing an old clapboard house and a parking lot. These abodes will be one- and two-bedroom apartments, with 26 units set aside as affordable housing. The structure will have a clean white exterior, with large floor-to-ceiling windows, glass corners, and wrap-around balconies. It’ll sit on top of a two-level underground parking garage, and there is a rooftop deck with ocean and mountain views.

Madison Realty bought the site back in January from NMS Properties, now called WS Communities, after a foreclosure settlement tied to over a billion dollars in unpaid debt. This site is one of the nine Builder’s Remedy projects Santa Monica agreed to push through as part of a deal with WS Communities last year. The builder’s remedy is a loophole in state housing law that lets developers bypass local zoning if they provide at least 20% affordable housing in cities that haven’t nailed down their housing plans.

Real Estate Wire Fraud

Recently an officer of a tech company that was purchasing a home received an email from her mortgage broker with directions to wire the $398k down payment to a Chase account; she wasted no time sending the money.
The email appeared to be a response to one she had sent her broker, asking about the final steps before the rapidly approaching closing.

The next day, a duplicate request for a down payment alert made her realize she had fallen for a scam. She had been tricked into sending her life savings to a criminal. Scams involving fake emails in real estate deals have exploded over the last decade, rising from less than $9 million in losses in 2015 to a massive $446 million by 2022, according to the FBI. OPENDOOR - the online selling and buying entity - was the listing agent for the house. Might a 'human' agent have alerted her to this potential risk? (CNBC)

STUDIO 54

The average size of studio units has shrunk by 54 square feet to 445 sqft since 2014, making them 10% smaller today than they were a decade ago. (NYT)

Of the very few active listings, these are the newest:

416 4th Street- Listed for $7,998,000. This house was extensively remodeled in 2013 and sits on a big, 9,800 sqft lot. Cape Cod style with nice finishes and a pool, but it has a bit of a funky floorplan. Previously purchased in 2011 for $2,580,403.

634 15th Street- Listed for $4,499,000. Ready for renovation, this house is 2,800 sqft on a 7,500 sqft lot. Priced higher than lot value and hoping to find an owner-user who is willing to do some work.

424 10th Street- Listed for $4,500,000. Similar to the 15th Street listing above, this is 2,330 sqft on a 7,500 sqft lot. It is a good candidate for a Buyer who is ready to take on an updating project, but it is certainly livable as-is.

814 Georgina Avenue- Listed for $5,995,000. This is a unique property in that it is a little 1,843 sqft house plus detached studio on a little 3,700 sqft lot! It is really cute and designer-done. Street parking only. Price seems pretty aggressive considering the lot size. Last sold in 2005 for $2,150,000.