This year I sold a client a home in the Island Village development in Long Beach. My client was looking for something very specific and she needed to sell her home first to
buy. She chose to sell her home first in case the perfect home came along, she wanted to be ready to pounce. Plus she had both friends and family to live with.
It has been my general understanding that as a rule of thumb people move every 7 years. I never really questioned this number. If there were 174 total units in Island Village and people moved every 7 years then there would be 24 people moving every year, or 2 per month. Prior to selling her home, she saw her dream unit in the complex, but wasn’t ready to make a move. This is what spurred her on to get her home sold. I was certain that we would have 1-2 units per month to choose from. Which would give her 6-12 places to choose from after 6 months of looking. I thought that we would be certain to find her place within 6 months. I was wrong. It took about one year to find what she was looking for in Island Village. In addition there was only about 3 properties that we had to choose from during this year.
How could I be so wrong? Island village are patio homes and you would think the demographic for this type of property would mean people’s average stay might be shorter than the average SFR neighborhood. Even if my “move every 7 year” number was way off and it was 14 years, there should have been at least 1 new listing a month.
Where did this 7 Year number come from and how can my experience be so different. Within 30 seconds of googling “news how often do homeowners move”. The first article listed from the google search is from Realtor Magazine, titled “Average Homeowner Stay 8 Years before moving” Click for Realtor Magazine Article. This article does outline that in 2014 the number was more like every 7 years. So good news I am not crazy, but this doesn’t allude to any answers as to why our Long Beach market is SOOOO different. Other cities listed in the article come in at higher numbers from San Jose and San Francisco at 10 years to Hartford Conn at 12.5 years.
What is the turnover rate for Long Beach homes? It shouldn’t be that hard to calculate. It is simply the number of homes in Long Beach divided by the number of annual sales. This morning I called my title rep to get the number of SFR homes in Long Beach. That number is 59,318. Then I got on the MLS and ran stats for the last year. There have been 2,044 sales in the last year. I will quickly adjust this number up by 10% under the assumption that maybe 10% of homes sell by private party or don’t show up on the MLS. This is fair guess, it might be a little higher or lower, but won’t affect the math too much.
With 2,248 estimated sales out of 59,318 homes, 3.8% of homes turn over on a annual basis. Then the average person moves only every 26 years!!!!! Are people really this stable, and might this be causing the very low inventory of homes for sale. I just re-ran our current inventory of SFR homes and we are indeed at record lows with only 263 homes for sale.
The national average is 8 years but Long Beach is every 26 years ?!!!? What could be some possible explanations for such a large discrepancy. This is really odd. My original theory was that Long Beach offered two things that other cities or areas might not. One, prop 13 incentives owners to Not move, as their tax base is reset upon repurchasing, and work opportunity that don’t require relocation. The second reason is that Long Beach is very centrally located to may work opportunities. It is easy to change jobs many times and never have to move. This would not be true if you lived in a small college town or any other town that offered limited employment. These are great reasons, but San Jose and San Francisco offer these as well. So in all honesty, I don’t have statistics on Why. I only have stats on how much, and people in Long Beach simply don’t move. I guess if I were to ask people who have been in their homes for 10+ years and said “Why aren’t you moving?”. The answer I would commonly get would be “Why, where would I move?”
And that may simply be the only valid explanation. There aren’t a lot of places better than Long Beach. Long Beach is a great town with a great quality of life. Great for the young family just getting started, and great for an elderly person that has lived in their home for 30+ years. Long Beach is simply a great place to put down roots. Often people say the Long Beach is a small “big town” because people are very interconnected. This reflects the permanence of its citizens. I know all these reasons sound cheesy, but the facts back it up. Why else would Long Beach residents stay in their home for 26 years? This is over 3 times the national average.