Your House Isn't Worth $2,000 a Foot

Why one neighbor's price per square foot rarely carries over, and what actually sets a South Bay home's price

By Ed Kaminsky | Rocket Bay | South Bay Real Estate Insights | Week 7

Why do sellers keep reaching for one number?

It happens a lot. A seller hears about one particular sale, maybe down the street, maybe at a dinner party. They take the price, divide by the square footage and apply that number to their own house. Now they have a value in their head.

I understand the appeal. Price per square foot is simple, it's public, and it feels objective. Price per square foot can be a gauge. But it is not a valuation, and in Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach it can mislead you badly.

This article walks through why, using real closed sales, one current listing, a two-year sample of CRMLS data and the method I use when I sit down with a seller.

What does "price per square foot" actually measure?

It's the sale price divided by the home's living area. A $3,000,000 sale of a 2,000-square-foot home works out to $1,500 a foot.

That's it. The number doesn't know anything about the lot, the block, the view, the slope, the age of the house, the quality of the work or who wanted to buy it. All of those things are baked into the price, and then the price gets divided by one feature: interior square footage.

So when two homes have different numbers, the math is telling you that they're different. It isn't telling you why.

Why doesn't a new-construction number apply to a remodeled home?

This is the most common version I deal with today.

A brand-new construction home sells for, call it, $1,500 a square foot. Someone nearby has a home that was built 30 or 40 years ago, in the '80s. They've done a remodel and put in some fancy items. They want to apply the same price per square foot.

It never happens.

You'll see a massive difference in material choices in new construction. The desirability of new construction is massively different. And the supply of buyers for new construction is massively different. Put those together and you'll see a significant difference in price per square foot.

A good remodel matters. It can make an older home far more appealing than an unremodeled one. But it doesn't turn the house into new construction in a buyer's eyes, and the buyers specifically shopping for brand-new homes are often a different group of people with a different checklist.

Can two similar homes a couple of blocks apart really sell $1 million apart?

Yes. One of my biggest aha moments came in the Tree Section nearly 20 years ago.

For years I remembered two new Manhattan Beach homes from 2007 that sold about $1 million apart despite being close in age, size and location. We went back into CRMLS history, which covers sales from 2000 on, and found the pair:

• 717 31st Street (MLS S950399): built 2007, 3,490 square feet on a 5,000-square-foot lot. SOLD for $3,200,000 on October 8, 2007, about $917 a foot.
• 648 35th Street (MLS S950505): built 2007, 3,590 square feet on a 5,400-square-foot lot. SOLD for $2,075,000 on December 27, 2007, about $578 a foot.

That's a $1,125,000 gap, 80 days apart. The less expensive home was slightly larger and sat on the larger lot.

If you've ever been on 31st Street, you know it's a special block. It's tree-lined, has gas lamps and is filled with character. That block has historically done well, and the 717 listing called it "highly sought after 31st Street" in the gaslight Tree Section. It's literally a short walk to 35th; there's no 32nd or 34th Street in that stretch. You're talking a pitching-wedge shot away.

I want to be careful here. My memory was that these were the same builder and the same floor plan. The records don't establish that. The 717 31st Street listing identifies it as a Rick Farnham development; the builder of 648 35th isn't confirmed in what we found. So I can't tell you the street alone explains all $1,125,000. What I can tell you is that two newer homes of similar age and size, a couple of blocks apart, closed at very different prices. Price per square foot alone would never have predicted that.

What does this look like in East Manhattan Beach right now?

Take a cruise over to East Manhattan Beach. Here are two new-construction homes of almost the same size:

• 1525 10th Street: about 5,051 square feet, SOLD for $6,325,000 on February 3, 2026. That's about $1,252 a foot.
• 1827 9th Street: about 4,956 square feet, ASKING $5,250,000 as of October 18, 2026. That's about $1,059 a foot.

Why the difference? In my opinion, the quality and upgrades that went into 1525 10th Street are superior to the homes being built on the blocks closer to Aviation Boulevard. You can see it in the material choices, the finished materials and how the whole thing was executed. And any time you get close to a busier street like Aviation, prices tend to come down. I've had to explain exactly this to buyers comparing the two.

Two cautions. First, this compares a closed sale with an asking price. An asking price is a seller's starting point, not a result, so this does not tell us what 1827 9th Street will sell for. Second, one sale is one data point. It's evidence, not a rule for the neighborhood.

How often do homes actually sell for $2,000 a foot?

Less often than the dinner-party conversation suggests.

I looked at a CRMLS export of closed single-family sales in Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Palos Verdes Estates, limited to homes recorded as built in 2005 or later, closing October 24, 2024 through October 16, 2026. The export had 238 sales. I excluded four that weren't finished-home sales (a vacant lot, a development-opportunity property, and two sales that appear to have closed before construction was finished). That left 234 sales.

Here's what the sample shows:

• Only 41 of 234 single-family sales, about 18%, sold for $2,000 a foot or more, nearly all of them in the sand and hill sections. A separate pull that includes townhomes puts the Hermosa Sand Section median at $1,537 a foot (49 sales), below $2,000.
• The median across all 234 was $1,351 a foot; the average was $1,539 a foot. (The average runs higher because a handful of oceanfront sales pull it up.)
• Individual sales ranged from $579 to $3,977 a foot. The top five were all on The Strand.

By city (medians, with averages and number of sales):

City	Median $/sf	Average $/sf	Sales
Hermosa Beach	$1,532	$1,786	43
Manhattan Beach	$1,419	$1,557	155
Palos Verdes Estates	$1,145	$1,169	36

And by neighborhood (MLS area medians):

Neighborhood	Median $/sf	Sales
MB Sand†	$2,015	50
Hermosa Sand†	$1,537	49
MB Tree Section*	$1,483	52
MB Heights/Liberty Village*	$1,215	14
Hermosa East*	$1,004	11

†CRMLS closed sales including townhomes, built 2005 or newer, [date range] (averages: MB Sand $2,034, Hermosa Sand $1,838 a foot). Rows marked with an asterisk: single-family pull, built 2005+, 10/24/24–10/16/26.

Some limits you should know about. The "year built" field sometimes reflects a rebuild rather than original construction. Several sales were off-market deals entered into the MLS only for comparison purposes, and they're included. Off-market sales that never went into the MLS aren't here at all. These are medians and averages for a group of sales, not a value for anyone's house.

Still, the headline holds: within this sample of newer homes, $2,000 a foot was the exception. Even near the sand it isn't automatic. The Hermosa Sand Section median, townhomes included, was $1,537 a foot.

Can two homes the same size be worlds apart?

The sample has a dramatic illustration. 3222 The Strand in Hermosa Beach, 3,947 square feet, sold for $15,500,000, about $3,927 a foot. 1154 2nd Street in Manhattan Beach, 3,808 square feet, sold for $3,300,000, about $867 a foot.

Almost identical size. Roughly 4.5 times the price per foot.

Nobody would compare an oceanfront Strand home with a home in the Mira Costa area east of the beach and expect the same number. But that's exactly my point. When you divide by square footage, you strip out the location, and location is often most of the story. These two are different places entirely; I use them to illustrate the spread, not to explain it.

Why does Palos Verdes Estates come in lower per foot?

In this sample, PVE's median was $1,145 a foot, below both beach cities. That doesn't mean PVE homes are "cheaper" in any simple sense. Its median lot in this sample was 11,880 square feet, against 2,857 in Hermosa Beach. Buyers there are paying for land, privacy and setting, and the house is spread across a lot more ground. Divide by interior footage and the number shrinks.

It's the clearest example of why a per-foot number from one city tells you little about another.

What happens when a home is priced too high?

When I explain overpricing to a seller, I usually hear one of three things: "If they don't like the price, they can just offer less." "The market just isn't cooperating." Or, "My agent isn't doing enough to get the right buyers in."

These are common and understandable. But here's what typically happens during the first 30 to 60 days when a home is overpriced: no one makes an offer. It sits. The seller is frustrated, the agents are anxious, and buyers just skip over it.

Why don't they make low offers? Here's the best way I can explain it. This is an illustration, not a statistic.

Imagine you're shopping for a $1 million home in Las Vegas. You can afford $1 million and intend to spend about that. You look at four houses. Three have four bedrooms, three baths and a swimming pool. One has three bedrooms, two baths and no pool.

Almost every buyer in that situation picks from the first three. You don't look at the fourth house and think, I'll offer less. That thought never even comes up. It just doesn't make your list, because you have three better choices. The fourth doesn't get a lowball offer. It doesn't get considered at all. It doesn't meet expectations at that price, so it gets ignored.

And there's a second problem: the wrong buyers are looking at the house. Say it's really an $850,000 home listed at $1 million. The buyers who would love it are shopping at $750,000 to $850,000. They aren't looking at million-dollar inventory, so they never see it. If one of them walked in, they might say, "This is exactly what I'm looking for," and write an offer. But they don't walk in.

Now the seller has to win back momentum. In that hypothetical, it might take a price of $800,000 to get traffic back, below where the home might have sold at the start. I can't prove that outcome for any particular house; it's an illustration of the risk. But in my experience, overpricing at the start is the single biggest pricing mistake I see agents and sellers make.

Is there a real example of that price path?

Here's a real Manhattan Beach listing history from CRMLS (MLS SB25031041).

533 15th Street, in the American Martyrs section of the Tree Section (MLS area: Tree): built 2004, about 5,300 square feet, ocean view.

• Listed February 13, 2025 at $12,999,000 (about $2,453 a foot)
• Reduced to $10,999,000, then to $9,999,000
• Closed September 30, 2025 at $8,448,000 after 197 days on market

That's 65% of the original list price, about $1,594 a foot, in the neighborhood of the $1,483 MLS Tree Section median in the sample above.

My opinion is that, priced correctly from the beginning, this home probably would have sold for more than it did. That's my judgment from experience, not something the record proves. Nobody can rerun the market with a different starting price. What the record does show is the path: a high start, two visible reductions and a close far below the first number.

How do I establish value when land matters?

For a lot of Manhattan Beach homes, land is a big part of the price. People ask what percentage of value is land. I don't use a universal percentage, because there isn't a reliable one.

Instead, there are enough sales to builders, or to homeowners who plan to build, to establish land value directly. Here's my process:

1. Pull the homes currently under construction in the area.
2. Look at what was paid for those properties, provided they were purchased within roughly the last 24 months. If someone bought 20 years ago and is building now, that purchase price isn't relevant.
3. That establishes a land value. Then adjust for the block, the location, the view and the orientation. Is it close to a busy street? Is it north or south of that street, or west of another one? Those are massive factors.

Then the improvements come in: what's actually on the lot, how old it is, how good the work is, and whether a buyer would keep it or tear it down.

Can't I just look up my value online?

You can, and most sellers do before we meet. The trouble is assuming it's accurate.

In areas like the South Bay, we don't have tract housing. There are so many factors a computer is unlikely to pick up: the year built, the lot size, whether the lot slopes, the view orientation, whether a neighbor's house blocks the view, whether a remodel was done and how good or bad it was.

In my experience, online values are often within range, but more often than not they're off, probably in the 5% to 10% range. That's my personal field impression, not a measured study. Usually they run high, but I've seen them run low too. It's always a pleasure to walk in when someone thinks their home is worth $3 million and it's worth $3.5 million.

Here's what Zillow itself publishes. For the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim metro, for homes not on the market, Zillow reports a median error of 6.73%, with about 39% of estimates within 5% of the sale price, 65% within 10% and 86% within 20%. For homes listed for sale, the median error is 1.98%. (Zillow, data updated September 30, 2026.) Zillow also says the Zestimate "is not an appraisal."

Read those numbers carefully. They cover a huge, varied metro, not Manhattan Beach or Hermosa Beach specifically. And they mean roughly one in three off-market estimates in the metro miss by more than 10%. On a $3 million home, 10% is $300,000.

That matters. If a seller believes the house is worth $3 million and has already gone shopping online for a $3.5 million replacement, a $300,000 difference changes the whole plan.

Estimates do get more accurate in tract neighborhoods, where the same builder built similar homes on similar lots with similar views and materials. That just isn't most of the beach cities.

What should you ask instead of "What's the price per foot?"

Whether you're buying or selling, these questions get you closer to the truth:

1. Is the comparable sale new construction, or an older home that's been remodeled?
2. Is it on a comparable block, with similar character and street influence?
3. How close is it to a busier street like Aviation Boulevard?
4. Does it have a similar view, and is that view protected or at risk?
5. How do the lots compare in size, slope and orientation?
6. Is it a closed sale or an asking price?
7. Was it a normal market sale, or an off-market or comp-only entry?
8. What have builders recently paid for land nearby, within about 24 months?
9. Who is the realistic buyer, and what else will they see at that price?
10. How has the price moved, and how long has it been on the market?

So what's the takeaway?

Price per square foot is a fine place to start a conversation. It's a terrible place to end one.

For sellers, a neighbor's number can set an expectation the market won't meet, and an overpriced home tends to be skipped rather than negotiated. For buyers, the same number can make a home look like a bargain or a stretch when the real differences are the block, the build and the view.

Look at the land, the location and the house itself. Then price it for the buyers who are actually shopping.

Your house isn't worth $2,000 a foot just because a neighbor's was.

About the author

Ed Kaminsky has been selling South Bay real estate since 1987, with over $4B in closed transactions.

Sources and notes: Sales data from a CRMLS Matrix export of closed single-family sales in Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Palos Verdes Estates, recorded year built 2005 or later, closed October 24, 2024 to October 16, 2026 (234 sales after 4 exclusions). MB Sand Section and Hermosa Sand Section figures that include townhomes come from CRMLS Matrix statistics sheets of closed sales built 2005 or later, [date range] (MB Sand: 50 sales; Hermosa Sand: 49 sales). Historical sales from CRMLS records. 1827 9th Street asking price as of October 18, 2026. Zillow figures from Zillow's Zestimate accuracy data (zillow.com/z/zestimate/), updated September 30, 2026. Price-per-foot figures are calculated as price divided by listed living area. The Las Vegas and $850,000 examples are illustrations, not real transactions. Nothing here is an appraisal or a value opinion for any specific property.

Photo credits: Rocket Bay cover art, Kaminsky Real Estate Group. The Strand, Hermosa Beach: Jim Holtz, public domain (Wikimedia Commons). Manhattan Beach Pier aerial: Andrew Bui; lifeguard tower: Jacob Repko; homes above the beach: frank mckenna; El Porto: Robson Hatsukami Morgan (all via Unsplash, CC0, Wikimedia Commons). Headshot: Ed Kaminsky.

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Ed Kaminsky | Kaminsky Real Estate Group | eXp Luxury

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