Closed sales by Palos Verdes MLS area with median price, price per square foot and days on market
Where the Demand Is: The Palos Verdes Price Brackets Buyers Are Fighting Over Right Now
296 Closed sales |
$895.9M Total volume |
$2.40M Median price |
$924 Median $/SF |
17.5 Median days on market |
98.8% Median sale ÷ list |
I have tracked the CRMLS every single day for more than 45 years. In all that time the question I am asked most often — by sellers deciding where to price and by buyers deciding where to compete — has never changed: where is the market actually busiest? Not where the headlines are. Not where the flashiest listings are. Where buyers are actually writing offers and closing escrows.
So I pulled every single-family home that closed on the Palos Verdes Peninsula over the last six months — Palos Verdes Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills Estates and Rolling Hills, all sixteen MLS areas — and looked at them two ways: by close price and by price per square foot. For each I built a histogram and a standard-deviation chart. Then I went looking for whatever else the data had to say about neighborhoods, days on market, pricing discipline and views. Here is what I found.
The Five Headlines
- Two-thirds of all Peninsula sales closed between $1.5 million and $3 million. The single hottest $250,000 bracket is $1.75M–$2.0M with 52 sales — one in every six homes sold on the hill landed there.
- The sweet spot for competition is $3M–$5M. More than half of those homes sold in 14 days or less, and roughly a third closed above asking — the strongest demand fingerprints in any bracket.
- Above $5 million the market changes character entirely. Only 1 of 29 sales over $5M closed above list; median time on market stretched to 60 days, and the typical estate sold at about 94% of its original asking price.
- Price per square foot is the better yardstick. It forms a near-bell-curve centered on $924/SF. Close price is so skewed by a handful of estates that its "average" ($3.03M) describes almost no one's actual home.
- There is a two-week cliff. Homes that went into escrow within 14 days got 100% of list or better. Past 30 days, sellers gave back 2–5% of list — and nearly 10% of their original ask once a listing passed 90 days.
1. Close Price: Which Brackets Are Highest in Demand
The chart below groups every closed sale into $250,000 brackets. I shaded the $1.5M–$3M core and highlighted the busiest single bracket in gold.
| Price bracket | Sales | Share | Median $/SF | Median DOM | Sold ≤14 days | Closed over list | Sale ÷ original list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $1.5M | 12 | 4% | $703 | 28.5 | 17% | 25% | 92.0% |
| $1.5M – $2.0M | 80 | 27% | $829 | 15 | 49% | 26% | 98.9% |
| $2.0M – $2.5M | 65 | 22% | $918 | 14 | 51% | 31% | 98.5% |
| $2.5M – $3.0M | 54 | 18% | $896 | 20.5 | 41% | 39% | 98.8% |
| $3.0M – $4.0M | 37 | 13% | $1,055 | 11 | 54% | 32% | 98.5% |
| $4.0M – $5.0M | 19 | 6% | $1,122 | 11 | 53% | 32% | 96.0% |
| $5.0M – $8.0M | 18 | 6% | $1,077 | 52.5 | 28% | 6% | 94.7% |
| $8.0M and up | 11 | 4% | $1,460 | 76 | 27% | 0% | 90.0% |
Volume follows a different pattern than count. By dollars, the three core brackets from $1.5M to $3M each produced $142–148 million — a remarkably even three-way split. But the 29 sales above $5M produced $236 million, more than a quarter of all dollar volume from one-tenth of the transactions. That is why the luxury tier gets so much attention, and why it is so easy to misread it as representative of the market. It is not.
2. Close Price: The Standard Deviation View
A standard deviation (σ) tells you how spread out the sales are around the average. In a textbook bell curve, about 68% of observations fall within one σ of the mean and 95% within two. The chart overlays that idealized curve (dashed navy) against what actually happened (gold).
The mean is $3,026,532. The median is $2,400,000. That $626,000 gap is the signature of a right-skewed market: a long tail of estate sales — three above $10 million, topped by a $24.3 million Rocky Point oceanfront in Lunada Bay — pulls the average up while the bulk of homes cluster far below it. The standard deviation is $2.2 million, so "one σ below the mean" lands at $823,000 — a price at which nothing sold. The ±1σ band therefore captures 91% of sales rather than the textbook 68%, and the normal curve badly under-predicts the $1.75M–$2.25M peak while over-predicting everything from $3.5M to $7M.
The practical lesson: never price or evaluate a Peninsula home against the "average sale price." Use the median, use the bracket, and above all use price per square foot.
3. Price Per Square Foot: The Histogram
Here is the same set of 296 sales measured by what buyers paid per square foot of living area, in $100 bands.
Notice the shelf at $1,200. Sales fall from 31 in the $1,100–$1,200 band to just 7 in the $1,200–$1,300 band. That is the point where ordinary neighborhood homes stop and a premium location, a view, or a new build has to justify the number. Only 38 sales (13%) cleared $1,200/SF, and nearly all of them were in Malaga Cove, Valmonte, Lunada Bay, Monte Malaga or Rolling Hills.
4. Price Per Square Foot: The Standard Deviation View
This is a far healthier distribution. Mean $958/SF, median $924/SF — only $34 apart. Standard deviation $270. Seventy-seven percent of sales fall inside ±1σ ($688–$1,228/SF) and 96% inside ±2σ ($417–$1,498) — very close to the textbook 68/95. That is why I rely on $/SF as the primary comparison tool between homes of different sizes and neighborhoods.
A home trading above $1,228/SF is in the top ~12% of the Peninsula on a per-foot basis and needs a story — ocean, coastline, new construction, a trophy street. A home below $688/SF is in the bottom ~12% and is usually either very large (where $/SF naturally compresses), in need of work, or on the east side of the hill. The one outlier worth naming: 71 Crest Road in Rolling Hills, a 3,109 SF home on 2.3 acres that sold for $8.3 million — $2,671/SF. That is land and view value, not house value.
5. Demand Heat: Where Buyers Are Competing Hardest
Sales count tells you where the volume is. To find where the competition is, I look at two things: how fast homes went into escrow, and how often they closed above the asking price.
- $3M–$5M is the hottest tier on a per-listing basis. 54% of $3M–$4M homes and 53% of $4M–$5M homes went into escrow within two weeks (median 11 days), and about a third closed above list. These are mostly updated homes in Valmonte, Malaga Cove, Lunada Bay and Rolling Hills Estates, and they are drawing multiple offers.
- $1.5M–$3M is the volume engine, and it is competitive too. Roughly half of all homes in this core sold within 14 days. The $2.5M–$3M bracket had the highest over-asking rate of any bracket at 39%.
- Under $1.5M is thin and slow. Only 12 sales, a 28-day median, and a 92% sale-to-original-list ratio — largely homes needing significant work.
- Above $5M, demand is real but patient. The $5M–$8M tier had a 52-day median and one over-asking sale; above $8M it was 76 days and none. Luxury buyers here are negotiating, not bidding.
6. Sixteen Neighborhoods, Sixteen Different Markets
| MLS area | Sales | Median price | Median $/SF | Median DOM | Sold ≤14 days | Over list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 160 Lunada Bay / Margate | 40 | $2,965,000 | $991 | 19.5 | 43% | 28% |
| 165 PV Drive North (RHE) | 39 | $2,500,000 | $861 | 10 | 59% | 26% |
| 164 Valmonte | 26 | $2,275,000 | $1,162 | 10.5 | 58% | 31% |
| 173 Los Verdes | 26 | $1,792,500 | $871 | 14.5 | 50% | 38% |
| 167 PV Drive East | 21 | $2,108,000 | $715 | 27 | 38% | 33% |
| 175 Peninsula Center | 21 | $1,875,000 | $836 | 15 | 48% | 29% |
| 163 Malaga Cove | 17 | $3,499,000 | $1,190 | 11 | 59% | 47% |
| 174 Crest | 16 | $1,964,500 | $856 | 13 | 50% | 31% |
| 169 PV Drive South | 15 | $1,825,000 | $793 | 33 | 27% | 20% |
| 176 Silver Spur | 15 | $1,805,000 | $933 | 31 | 40% | 20% |
| 172 La Cresta | 12 | $2,866,094 | $823 | 19 | 42% | 25% |
| 162 Monte Malaga | 12 | $3,800,925 | $1,058 | 39 | 33% | 33% |
| 166 Rolling Hills | 11 | $5,850,000 | $1,124 | 43 | 27% | 9% |
| 168 Mira Catalina | 11 | $2,200,000 | $819 | 53 | 27% | 9% |
| 170 West Palos Verdes | 8 | $2,385,000 | $850 | 26 | 25% | 13% |
| 171 Country Club | 6 | $2,490,000 | $933 | 12.5 | 50% | 50% |
- Malaga Cove is the most competitive neighborhood on the hill. Nearly half of its sales (47%) closed over asking, 59% went into escrow within two weeks, and its median $/SF of $1,190 is the highest of any area.
- Valmonte punches far above its price point. A median sale of $2.275M but $1,162/SF — second only to Malaga Cove — on homes that are typically 2,000–2,500 SF. The 10.5-day median says buyers are paying that premium quickly.
- PV Drive North (Rolling Hills Estates) was the fastest-moving large market. 39 sales at a 10-day median on homes that are big (median 3,172 SF) and still reasonably priced per foot at $861. For buyers who want size, this is the value corridor of the Peninsula.
- Lunada Bay / Margate carried the most volume ($179M) and the widest range — from a $1.8M starter to the $24.3M Rocky Point estate. Strip out the five sales over $7M and it behaves like a $2.5M–$3.5M neighborhood at ~$1,000/SF.
- The east side of the hill is the value play. PV Drive East ($715/SF), PV Drive South ($793/SF) and Mira Catalina ($819/SF) are the three least expensive areas per foot — and PV Drive East still had a 33% over-list rate, because many of those homes offer harbor and city-light views that would cost $300–400/SF more on the west side.
- The slow pockets were PV Drive South, Silver Spur, Mira Catalina and Monte Malaga (31–53 day medians), where several sales involved dated homes on large lots that were originally overpriced and reduced.
7. Days on Market and the Two-Week Cliff
This is, in my experience, the single most important chart for a seller. I grouped every sale by how many days it was actively on the market before going into escrow and looked at the price achieved relative to both the final list price and the original list price.
| Days on market | Sales | Share | Sale ÷ final list | Sale ÷ original list | Had a price cut | Median $/SF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 – 7 days | 83 | 28% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0% | $975 |
| 8 – 14 days | 51 | 17% | 100.7% | 100.7% | 0% | $917 |
| 15 – 30 days | 51 | 17% | 98.0% | 97.7% | 8% | $902 |
| 31 – 60 days | 38 | 13% | 96.7% | 92.4% | 55% | $894 |
| 61 – 90 days | 31 | 10% | 95.7% | 94.1% | 55% | $888 |
| Over 90 days | 42 | 14% | 95.3% | 90.3% | 67% | $919 |
- 45% of all Peninsula homes went into escrow within 14 days, and 28% within the first week. Not one of those 134 homes had a price reduction, and the median one sold at or slightly above full price.
- The cliff is at day 15. From the 8–14 day group to the 15–30 day group, the median price achieved drops from 100.7% to 98.0% of list. On a $2.4 million home that is a $65,000 swing in two weeks.
- Past 30 days, more than half of listings had already cut their price — and still sold at 96–97% of the reduced number. Measured against the original ask, the 31–60 day group netted 92.4%, and the 90-plus-day group netted 90.3%. Overpricing on day one is the most expensive mistake in this market.
- Seventy sales (24%) had at least one price reduction before selling. The median reduction was 6.5%, those homes took a median 77.5 days, and they closed at a median 89.9% of their original asking price. Homes that never reduced sold in a median 10 days at 100% of list.
8. Other Patterns Worth Knowing
Month by month
| Contract month | Sales | Median price | Median $/SF | Median DOM | Sale ÷ list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May | 45 | $2,550,000 | $942 | 11 | 99.0% |
| June | 41 | $2,245,000 | $946 | 10 | 99.3% |
| July | 58 | $2,272,500 | $868 | 19.5 | 99.2% |
| August | 55 | $2,375,000 | $962 | 21 | 98.6% |
| September | 45 | $2,423,975 | $918 | 37 | 98.0% |
| October | 52 | $2,522,500 | $876 | 17 | 99.6% |
July and August were the busiest months; September was the slowest to move (37-day median) before October snapped back to a 17-day median and the highest sale-to-list ratio of the period at 99.6%. Price per square foot has held in a $870–$960 band all six months — no meaningful trend up or down.
Size and bedrooms
Small homes command the highest $/SF ($990 under 2,000 SF) because land and location are a bigger share of the price; homes over 6,000 SF took a 69.5-day median to sell. Four-bedroom homes were the Peninsula's bread and butter: 138 of 296 sales (47%), median $2.45M. Three-bedrooms (66 sales) had a median of $1.87M; five-bedrooms (67) a median of $2.70M.
The view premium is smaller than you think — per foot
158 of the 296 sales (53%) advertised an ocean, coastline, harbor or Catalina view. Those homes sold for a median $2.55M versus $2.22M for homes without — but the $/SF difference was only $929 versus $919. The view premium is real in dollars, but it is mostly buying a bigger, better-located house; per foot, the market prices views far more conservatively than the marketing copy suggests. View homes also took longer to sell (22.5-day median vs 13), because view pricing is where sellers most often overreach. Where the premium is unmistakable is at the top: nine of the 11 sales over $8M had ocean or coastline views.
The top of the market
| Property | Close price | $/SF | DOM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 245 Rocky Point, Lunada Bay | $24,258,064 | $1,945 | 0 |
| 2729 Via Oleadas, Lunada Bay | $15,795,480 | $1,337 | 115 |
| 34 Crest Road, Rolling Hills | $11,250,000 | $1,579 | 124 |
| 1816 Paseo Del Mar, Lunada Bay | $9,750,000 | $1,196 | 163 |
| 1733 Paseo Del Mar, Lunada Bay | $9,700,000 | $1,878 | 50 |
Four of the five largest sales were on the Lunada Bay bluff. The Rocky Point sale closed at 81.5% of its $29.75M ask with zero days on market — a privately negotiated trophy transaction. The two Paseo Del Mar sales each started above $11.8M and closed below $10M after four to five months.
9. What I Would Do With This Information
If you are selling
- Price inside the bracket where the buyers are, not where you hope they are. If your home's honest value is $2.9M, pricing at $3.2M to "leave room" moves you out of the 54-sale $2.5M–$3M bracket where 39% of homes get over-asking offers, and into a thinner tier where you are competing with newer, larger homes.
- Treat the first 14 days as the entire sale. Half of the buyers who will ever see your home see it in that window. Full-price-or-better results happened almost exclusively inside it.
- Use $/SF as your reality check. If your pricing implies more than ~$1,230/SF and you are not in Malaga Cove, Valmonte, lower Lunada Bay or on a view lot, the market data says you will reduce.
- Above $5M, budget time and expect negotiation. 60 days and a 6–7% discount from original ask is normal — unless the home is priced on the comps from day one.
If you are buying
- In the $1.5M–$3M core, be pre-approved, be decisive, and expect company. Half the inventory is in escrow inside two weeks and roughly a third goes over list. A clean, fast offer in the first week is worth more than a slightly higher offer in week three — because by week three it is gone.
- Look east for value. PV Drive East, PV Drive South, Mira Catalina and Crest deliver the Peninsula's schools and lot sizes at $700–$850/SF, often with harbor or Catalina views.
- Look for the listings that passed day 30. Over half have already reduced, and the median buyer in that group paid 92–94% of the original asking price.
- Above $5M, you have leverage. With 29 sales in six months and a 60-day median, you can negotiate on price, terms and contingencies.
The seller who priced $300,000 above the bracket and gave back 10% after four months. The buyer who waited for "a better deal" on a home that went into escrow on day six with three offers. The estate owner who expected a two-week sale and planned a move around it. I see every one of these every month — and every one of them was avoidable with the information in this report.
I have tracked this market every single day for more than 45 years. I know which bracket your home belongs in, which neighborhoods are moving and which are stalling, where the two-week cliff is, and what the price per foot has to be for your home to be the one buyers compete for. That knowledge is the difference between a decision made on data and a decision made on hope — and on the Peninsula, hope is very expensive.
Before you list, before you write an offer, before you make a decision you cannot take back — talk to me. The consultation is free. The mistakes are not.
| Schedule a 20-minute market conversation → |
(424) 722-9136 · george.fotion@homeispalosverdes.com
PalosVerdesHomesBest.com · SearchHomesInPrivate.com
Data notes: All figures are drawn from CRMLS closed single-family residential sales with a contract status change date between May 1 and October 31, 2026, in MLS areas 160–176. Days on market is cumulative days active in the MLS. Standard deviations are sample standard deviations. Median values are used throughout because they are not distorted by the handful of estate sales. Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed; past results do not predict future performance.
