January City/Neighborhood Price Reductions
Let’s take our monthly look at which cities and towns have the most price reductions.
The following charts show the percent of MLS, FSBO or REO listings that were price-reduced at some point before leaving the market (either sold or removed unsold from the market) in the past 90 days. Cities/towns or neighborhoods in which the number of homes taken off the market was too small to provide believable estimates are excluded from ranking.
For those that are interested, I have uploaded the full data set in Excel format here (saved in Excel 97-2003 .xls format by request). In order to keep from overwhelming you with charts, I am leaving out the top ten cities/towns/neighborhoods with the least reduced-price listings from the post, but you can still see that chart in the downloaded file.
First up are the top ten cities with the most price-reduced listings:

Of the 112 cities/towns we ranked in Los Angeles County this month, 36 had price-reduced ratios of fifty percent or more. Signal Hill, Mayflower Village, La Verne, Westlake Village, West Hollywood, and El Segundo all made the top ten for the last three months.
Getting a little more granular, let’s look at the top ten Los Angeles County neighborhoods for price reductions:

78 of the 173 neighborhoods we ranked in Los Angeles County had a price-reduced ratio of fifty percent or more. Baldwin Hills and Sunpark both made the top ten for the third month in a row.
For home buyers, cities and neighborhoods that consistently remain near the top of the list for price reductions may be a good place to potentially hunt for bargains. Once a home has been on the market a while, many buyers tend to overlook it, even though a price reduction or two may have brought it into a more desirable price range.
Amber said:
This is helpful to also see some of the newcomers to these lists – some of the more desirable areas are finally getting pinched some.
January 11, 2009 8:02 PM
kendall said:
El Segundo’s not surprising. For years this blue-collar town was ridiculously costly. Being adjacent to LAX & Chevron refinery used to mean $900K+ for tiny bungalow.
January 12, 2009 2:05 AM
Greg said:
This tells us absolutely nothing. What you really need to know is what were the statistics in a normal market. From the information provided, it is hard to tell anything except the price was reduced. Was it reduced $1, $5000, etc … ?
Much more useful than price reductions is market absorption.
January 16, 2009 2:22 PM
Matt said:
@Greg, we’ll be posting about absorption soon.
January 19, 2009 6:01 PM
ed said:
What is the time period of this data? Is it year end 2008?
January 24, 2009 10:03 PM