SoCal Luxury Experts Weigh In On Where The Market Is Headed

At California Listings’ Power Players Real Estate Showcase, SoCal’s top luxury real estate agents weighed in on everything from marketing strategies to the importance of team cohesion. But the multi-million dollar question remains: where is this market headed?!

We asked Rochelle Maize, Kofi Nartey, Sally Forster Jones and Ernie Carswell to look into their crystal balls and share where they believe the SoCal market is headed…

Rochelle Maize: The market is stable. Yes, there is some uncertainty out there and it is a little bit scary, but I think it’s going to remain stable. It comes down to location, location, location. We’re in the best area in California on the luxury end so our area is a little but bulletproof. If the market does correct a bit, we’re not going to fall as much. And if the market continues to rise, we’re going to rise further. 

Kofi Nartey: I definitely think we have to pay attention to the metaverse and what’s happening with crypto. These meta properties and cryptocurrencies that have true utility aren’t going to disappear any time soon. In terms of where the market is going, look at all the numbers. We should know the basics of our industry, where interest rates are. These things will continue to impact the market but there’s always going to be someone with a reason to buy. There’s always going to be someone with a reason to sell. It’s usually life-style driven, life occurrences like births, deaths, divorces. Overall, I don’t see the market crashing. I think it’ll slow down a little bit, but what we’re seeing now is what I like to think of as a cup of tea or coffee. You can’t pick it up because it’s too hot. You blow on it a couple of times, cool it off to take a sip but you can’t guzzle it. That’s where we’re at right now: it’s still too hot to guzzle. We’re still seeing low inventory. We’re still seeing multiple offers, but where as months ago we may have seen 15 offers, now we’re seeing nine. That’s the slowing. All of this indicates a more stable market. But the demand for Southern California and this lifestyle will remain strong. 

Sally Forster Jones: There is uncertainty and people are nervous. But in the long run, real estate has always gone up. I’m confident about our local market. When the market crashed in 2008, people had no equity in their properties. People were buying properties with 0 percent down or even getting paid to buy. But right now, there’s so much equity and there’s a lot of security in that. There will always be buyers, there will always be sellers and there will always be lifestyle changes. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen from day to day, but I’m very, very optimistic over the long run. 

Ernie Carswell: I think the market is moving away from density. A lot of the great estates in our region are in outlying areas. Think about Calabasas, Malibu highway, not Malibu beach. People want space and acreage, which is a plus for our market. And I also believe that equity will save us. There’s much more real money in residential real estate now than there was in 2007. It was all leveraged then, but that’s been corrected. I predict there will be a pricing adjustment, and while I don’t know when it will hit us, it will be a softer landing. It won’t be a crash.