Why Some California Homes Sell at Record Prices | Marcy Weinstein & Matt McCormick

There was a recent sale in San Francisco where one luxury house was sold 10 million above the asking price. Same thing is happening in Southern California in Orange County. In this last 18 months we've seen more over 30 million dollar homes sell than the last several years combined. What's really happening here and is this a trend? Today we sit down with Marcy Weinstein who has been in a luxury real estate space in Southern California specifically in Orange County. We also sit down with Matt McCormick, who's in real estate in Northern California and Los Angeles. He also is a wealth management professional. The competition to get their kids into those public schools, it's getting intense. They're going to outbid people to make sure that they get that property. What about the rest of the market? Is there a cutoff where below a certain value this is not happening? Marcy, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you very much. I appreciate being here. We want to talk to you about luxury real estate, and you are in the middle of it in Southern California. People want to know what's going on. Can you tell us what you're seeing out there? You know, it's been a really unique time since COVID. After COVID, everybody wanted to buy bigger homes, and I don't blame them. I think that it was a time of saying, hey, let's enjoy where we live, and you had to. So that was when we sold the first $50 million home. It was right during that time. And then it kept being more and more going up in price. So I had the crown selling the highest house, which was Dean Koontz's house. for 50 million to Glenn and Mindy Stearns and then one was sold for 61 million in Crystal Cove and we sold one in Irvine Cove for 70 million. I consider luxury to be anything over 10 million in this town although really when you're talking about the ultra luxury it's over 30 million. And this last 18 months, we've seen more over $30 million homes sell than the last several years combined. So it's been quite a unique renewal of some people buying luxury homes. I'm not sure I can say why, except that I think that a lot of those homes weren't available before that. And I think people want to live here. So we've seen people come from New York, from LA, even from Florida. And so I think people just want to come here and live in Orange County. It's such a beautiful area. And so we've seen it grow and it's been exciting. Have the prices appreciated significantly or? They've appreciated a lot since the COVID days. Since then, the property prices have gone up two to three times, as well as the interest rates have. Although the high end really isn't affected by interest rates because most of the transactions are cash. It still affects the overall market. But you had interest rates then that were 2% to 3% for long-term rates. And of course, those have doubled since then, back to a normal rate of 6% to 7%. Now, who's buying? You mentioned people are coming from Florida and other parts of the state. Who are these people? Is it business owners? It's always a business owner that decides to either come back here or have a second home here. Some of them are second homes. In the case of the gentleman from New York, it's a second home, the one that bought the $70 million home. He lives in New York. We've sold ones to ones in Florida that it was a second home for them as well. The ones that bought the $61 million one that was local, we had already sold them a home on the water and then they had all their family and wanted to have a larger home here. So there have been some foreign investments, but not as many in the last four years. That has dwindled from foreigners. So we were hearing that Chinese buyers were coming and buying a lot of... They were. That is pretty much since the change that happened in... Hong Kong and that became more and more under control that has dwindled down to nothing. Hong Kong was the last segment of money coming from China. In terms of people that are buying these are they looking at this more of it as an investment opportunity or are they looking at these just just something to have to enjoy like to live there? I think in almost every case it's to enjoy living and you know really when you think about it if you've worked hard your whole life And, you know, when you travel, you get exhausted. But when you come home to a mansion or to a place like that with the views that we have there and the air that we have, I mean, California is so unique, especially here in Orange County. We have luxury air and luxury. Openness and the ability to walk down to the beach the ability from Crystal Cove to walk right under the highway down to Crystal Cove State Beach was which is about four miles of uninterrupted unbuilt on Beach, so you've got the ability to have amazing amenities right there with your fingertips and Enjoy a luxury that you could travel all around the world I've been all around the world and you come back here, and you think this is better And it is. So why not buy the most beautiful home you can here and enjoy it right here and travel in your mind? And in terms of the inventory, is it because there's not enough inventory in the markets or is the inventory the same as before? You mean it's why the prices have gone up? Well, the prices have gone up because cost of manufacturing has gone up, and then what the rarity is, is in the land. So when Newport Coast opened, back when I first bought in there, I think I'm the longest resident of all of Newport Coast, that was the last open land there was for sale. And within that, there was a total of maximum with all of the open land that was dedicated. And Newport Coast was over 20 years to get through all of the agreements, took over 20 years to get all the entitlements done there. And they had to leave over 7,000 acres left in perpetuity. in perpetuity. So that includes Crystal Cove State Park and the beach and et cetera. But there was only a few segments. There was only 2,600 homes maximum that could be Newport Coast. And the minute I saw it, I fell in love. I said, oh my gosh, the views, the size of the land, and the possibilities of building your own dream there was just, I felt absolutely head over heels in love. I had my license before that, but that's when I started selling real estate, was when Newport Coast opened. Now, when you see a home goes on the market for $50 million, does it impact, do you think the rest of the community's value goes up the same way, or is it because there's limited inventory, somebody really wants that home, and they're willing to pay whatever? I think when you're seeing homes in that price point, you're seeing unusual homes. That price would have to be something that's newer. The homes that we're talking about, they got that kind of sales that were having had larger land, larger size homes, and were in the newer or immaculate condition. So that is not going to affect a home that's been there 30 years that people haven't done any improvements to. You know, home ownership, you have to keep improving it in order to keep up with that kind of price range. I bet, you know, we've seen it go from, I remember the first sale that was $4 million, the first sale that was $10 million, the first sale that was $20 million, the first sale that was $30 million, and I was lucky enough to be in each one of those categories, and then we hit a $40 million, and then a $50 million, and now we've had one in the New Port Coast that's $61, and we are going to see a couple coming out this next week that will be over $100 million, and they're worth it. Because of the size of the homes and the land and the impossibility to build again without tearing down homes. So if a home is new or newer, let's say built in the last five years, you're starting to see that there's no more place to build and how long it takes to build. Some of these homes have taken, you know, five to seven years to build and now to build them again, to recreate them, you'd have to buy two homes, tear them down, start from the beginning. I mean, we take about seven years total. And that's a long time. One that just sold in Irvine Co. for $110 million was less than five years old, and it was rare. It was on the beach front with over almost 11,000 square feet of home size. That's a rare for ocean front to be newer, built vertically with each floor having a view. So that home sold for a new record. And then another record was just broken in a little bit further south in Laguna for $82 million. And it was, again, on more land on that one. So the age has to be there or the land or something unique to make it be in that category or a combination of both, like the ones we're bringing out where it has more land and it's newer and kept perfectly up. Otherwise, you're not going to ever achieve those new numbers. So let's say a house could be right next door to a house that sold for $50 million. In fact, the Stearns are a good example of that. They bought their home, which is on four lots and about 35,000 square feet for $50 million. And then they bought the one next door. For about $7 million, and the one next door to that for $11 million. So I call that street Glenopoly or Monopoly, depending on whether I'm speaking to Glenn Stearns or Mindy Stearns. Now, Marcy, some people have been complaining about the taxes, and there has been a lot of talk about people leaving California. Are you seeing that in the real estate market, or people keep their homes when they leave? I think there's always going to be some fear of that. The luxury tax happened in L.A., and we've seen some people not buying in certain areas up there, and they maybe want to come down here for that. The billionaire tax, number 40, did not pass. So hopefully we keep our billionaires in California. Because I think it's unusual to tax us more. I mean, you can be at any kind of, any time you're making over a certain amount, you're paying over 51% tax of everything you make, so the government's already getting more than half. To tax more than that would really be quite unfair. I have not seen a tremendous amount of exodus at the high end. I'm sure that there are people that say, hey, I'm retiring, and the state income tax is high here, so maybe they've gone to places like Florida. Or Texas, et cetera, because the state income tax is less there. But, you know, you have other things that cost you more there. Air conditioning, other things. I rarely turn on my air conditioning. My entire way of living is either open the window or close it for my air. Because the air is so beautiful there and where we live and coastally in Orange County. Can you tell us what you're seeing in the rest of the market? Definitely under 10 million is affected by the interest rates, without a doubt, even probably 10 to 20 million, because in order to get there, you'd have to usually get a loan. And what I've seen is that there's been a tremendous amount of people that got loans back when they were at the lower rate, and they don't want to give up that home Home to. to move somewhere. They don't want to give up that rate. And so to sell and then suddenly pay a higher rate, they're really paying more like four times as much because maybe the house price has gone up twice as much and the rate's gone up twice as much on an average or more. So you're seeing a less inventory. We still have a 30% less inventory than we did at the peak of the market. So we don't have as much inventory as we used to. And it slows down a little bit at that range. What about the lower end? How's that market? So there's still a tremendous amount of people that want to buy in a lot of competition anywhere locally here in Orange County for a million and under. That's rare air, as you might say, just as rare as the super high end is. And people are scrambling to get those homes. So we try to tell our clients to be prepared, have their loans ready, be prepared to buy it as is, where is, to be more competitive or to get their home already ready to sell. Subject to the house they buy. So we try to get clients ready for that because that end of the market is hard to find a home in. Do you see the AI money here in Southern California, Orange County area? I seem to see a lot of AI agents. I Not any of their money. But I have not seen a tremendous amount of the... don't of that coming down here and I think there is there is a few people coming down here that are involved in that. I've sold one home in Pelican Ridge to a gentleman that was involved in AI know. and but in my personal experience I haven't met or seen that many. It's not a high percentage you out of 10 say out of 20 sales you might have one person that's in AI. Are the rates higher if you You are getting a $20 million loan. Now, generally, you have better credit. You have better assets and they're lower. Interesting. In terms of where the market is headed, where do you think the market is going from here? You know, I've been asked that question since the 35 years I've been in this industry. And I've always said, in my opinion, other than the possibility of a war or something cataclysmic coming on, it's always going up. Because again, there's only so much property to be had. And there's only so much view property. And it's a spectacular place to live. So I see it only going up. And how did you get into this? You said you were the first home in your area. And I'm the longest resident. Maybe not the first home, but I outlived them all. I stayed there. I think that, how did I get into it? I saw the Newport Coast. The minute I saw Newport Coast, I just thought it was the most amazing planned development I could imagine. And I immediately bought a lot. First, I put money down on a house that was being built by Bramalea. It was a Canadian company. And then I backed out of that to buy land. And, um, cause I thought it was going to be better for me, uh, to get what I wanted to be able to build it. And, um, so I immediately bought land and immediately called everybody I knew to say, you've got to buy up here. It's spectacular. So I just fell in love with it. And that's when I started selling in real estate. I'd had my license before that, but I hadn't really, you know, to me selling is Number one, you have to love what you're selling and believe in it in order to really do a good job. And the most important thing is to help other people achieve their dreams and make their dreams come true. So that was going to happen up here in Newport Coast. Did you think it's going to, one day you're going to see these numbers? It's always going to be surprising to see those numbers, but when you started adding up each time the lot price went up, each time the cost of building went up. I mean, I started building in 92, a totally different cost to build then. The cost to build then was like $250 a square foot. Now you can't build for under probably $1,250 a foot. And that's not building the luxury that we're talking about at the high, high end. That's more in the thousands of dollars because the materials and the craftsmanship and the labor that's involved and the amazing finishes that are involved are incomparable. So I don't think I saw what it's become. I saw a lot. I knew it was spectacular to be there and people were buying more than one lot. They were buying two, three, four. The mirages live on what is six lots plus the cul-de-sac, so I don't know that I could have imagined that from the very first day I started, but I saw it changing completely in the very beginning. Was there a moment you realized that this place is changing? Yes, originally there was only going to be two custom areas. It was going to be Pelican Point and Pelican Hill. And then there was going to be where Crystal Cove is, a place called Wishbone, which is going to be larger acreage, two to seven acres. And the rest of everything was going to be builder track and apartments and more builder track. There was a maximum of 2,600 homes. But what happened was... Bramale went under in the early 90s because the rates and because of what was going on with the economy at that point. And they were doing well here in California, but badly in Canada. So they went under and they didn't take their second half of their option on all the land. And at that point, Standard Pacific also didn't take their option on some of the land. And so I had come to the Irvine Company with a proposal and a client to build out those with homes that were going to be developed, but not a tract. more homes that were going to be custom. They liked the idea so much that they did that, put brand product in there in what was Ocean Ridge, now Pelican Ridge, and then they took Pelican Crest. And took that from being a builder product and made it into custom homes. Then they took what was going to be the apartments on the other half of Pelican Crest and made that into custom homes. So now the entire area of that is 177 custom homes versus what it was going to be. And that was the moment I realized that the custom home market was going to change the whole landscape of Newport Coast. And then they switched around the maximum. Do you have any comments on Southern California? Well, you know, I grew up here. I wasn't born here. I was born to two very American parents. But California is the only place I know that I grew up in and lived. And then I left for a while and went to Texas for a while. And I couldn't wait to come back here. This is just, there's just nothing like Southern California to live in. And I think that until you experience it. I'd love to see it go back to the way it was when I was in high school, where it was a lot easier to create businesses and to build and to do some spectacular things with your life here. It's a little harder of a place to always achieve what you'd like to as a young family. But if you can live here, it's the best place, I think, to do it all in. There's so much that happens here with education. We have amazing private schools, public schools. The public schools are amazing here. They have the best reputations. We have restaurants. We have such a mix of culture and availability. Like I said, you can walk to the beach, you can see the snow on the mountains on the same time you see the waves crashing. You could have an airport less than 10 minutes away to escape to anywhere you want to go. You have a foreign country just an hour and a half away. We've got agriculture still. We've got everything. We've got culture that has come in here. With all the Segerstroms and all of the different communities trying to bring in art, so we really have an amazing place here that's, and it's got space around it, it's not so crowded and we still have, thank God for our beautiful community of law enforcement, crime is still illegal in Orange County. So tell us about when you were building your home and when now people, new people, have to build new homes. How long would it take? You mentioned seven years for a new home. Well, that's for one of these large ones like the Kuntz's house took seven years. And that's quite a bit different. You're talking about 35,000. My house, when I was building it, was around 8,000 square feet. And I did not do a subterranean garage. I should have. But I was just building it as fast as I could. I built two whole human beings in the time my house got completed. I asked my builder, how come I can build two whole human beings and you can't finish one house? And he said, well, you didn't have change orders. Maybe you will when they're teenagers. But I think that it's a lot more involved than you can imagine. At that point, though, I had access to the lot next door, which made setting everything up to do all the construction a lot easier. And I didn't have to. Worry about other people's homes that I would be blocking with some of the equipment, etc. So it was a lot easier to build then. And of course, then that was in 1992. This is this is now 2026. You know, it's been quite a long time. It's it's cost a lot more now to build. So there's a lot of different things that go involved. I always told people they needed five people to be on their team. They needed to have. An architect, a landscape architect, a builder, a designer, and a marriage counselor, because someone has to be in charge for the construction. And it's important that they agreed. I did not have any divorces through any of the buildings, so I was really lucky. And I think I was very good at helping people see what they could build on a land and achieve that dream. It's something I love from my design days. My background is in design, and I loved Helping people achieve that, and I think there's been a tremendous amount of success. Recently, I had a dinner at my house that we had the top people that I had, not top, the top volume people. So one of my clients called me one day and said, Marcy, do you realize you've sold and bought over $131 million worth of real estate with you? And I said, no kidding. I had no idea. So it got me thinking, and I had a dinner two weeks ago that the over $100 million Clients of mine all came to dinner for a party, and it was wonderful. What an achievement to have people that, over the time I knew them, have bought and sold over $100 million worth of real estate. When somebody comes and wants to buy a property, let's say it's listed for $30, $40 million, how would people value that property? First, we make sure that they can afford to come see it and buy it. So one thing is we do is pre-qualify our clients to come look at it. And then second of all, you have to know what they've built here. You have to see what they've done. We have one house right now that was built to hospital earthquake standards, and every finish in it has been put to the highest retouch up of something. It's not a brand-new home, but it feels brand-new, so it's been remodeled every surface. All the electronics have been brought up to date, all the lighting has been redone inside and outside, and all the landscaping done to refresh and everything. So when someone sees a house in that condition, they can start to value what it is and see why it would take them years, they're in their family, growing years usually. And rather than try to build on land that isn't available or remodel a home, the time that it would take to do that, to buy a home that's already been remodeled or already in that condition, would help them value it. So the condition of a home becomes essential. Now we go to Matt McCormick to find out what's happening in the San Francisco real estate market. He also has a footprint in L.A. as well. We want to talk to you about the luxury real estate in California. You are involved in a few different markets from the Bay Area and also in Los Angeles. Can you tell us what you're seeing right now in the luxury market? Yeah, luxury market's a whole different ballgame right now. And I think a lot of people are seeing the future and feeling very positive about. Certain things that are going to happen in the market, like the Anthropic IPO, the money and the wealth that's been generated at NVIDIA, there's a lot of changes. And it's really one of those markets you can't predict. It's on a by-market basis. So right now, when you look at the data, we reviewed the data this week, that in the luxury market, just to give you one example, in San Francisco alone, last year, there were eight homes in the city of San Francisco that sold for a million over list price. At this time right now, we're at 140 for 2026. Wow. So it ate all of 2025 and 140 plus already into 2026. And that's without the Anthropic IPO that's about to happen. And then following behind that's going to be OpenAI. And that type of wealth right now is something we've never seen. Not in terms of such a... A large amount in a time period where inventories are low and it's driving crazy activities in certain spots. There's still areas in San Francisco and in Los Angeles where that's not happening. It's not happening everywhere. But when you have a property like this one that just sold last week for $10 million over list price in San Francisco, it's hard to get a comp for that property. So yes, it's sold for over $10 million over list. But when you really look at the property, There is no comp for such a unique property. It's a supply and demand issue of how bad do they want it. And when people have the kind of wealth that they do, some of the reports that we work off of right now, that they're paying AI engineers, a lot of the good ones, but at director level, $700,000 base salary now for an AI engineer in the Bay Area. That's a lot of money. Who is buying now? Is it all of this AI money that's buying this over ask? What are your thoughts on the buyers? Yeah, I would say if I had to put a percentage to it right now, I'd say about 50%. It's not all AI, but I think it touches upon so many other businesses, right? I mean, if you think about it, you have a large portion of wealth management, attorneys, high-end professionals, high income. Well, they also benefit from a lot of these. I was just recently selling a property in Los Altos, and one of the buyers is one of the bankers who's bringing Anthropic to the public market. So he's touching upon it. So you just have so many different angles when that happens, and there's so much generated that it's who's touching around it or also who's serving it or like anything else. If you're a CPA, everybody seems to benefit depending on their practice. So it's not all AI, but AI is definitely a big generator because it provides this big... positive outlook that California will be the home for AI and specifically right now of course the Bay Area and Silicon Valley like it always has. Now in terms of the inventory in the market is there a lot of inventory in the market or is there tightness? No no we're still going through inventory issues. What happens right now is that what happened in 2008 is that you had so much leverage going on and people were were using a refinance to buy a pool and a car and it wasn't This right now, because it's so hard to get money, the last 12, 14 years, the people that own homes, 40% of the homes in the U.S. are owned, completely owned, 40%. 40% is free of loan. No loan, great. They own it outright. The other part of it is they could actually do just as good if they want to rent their house. So if they don't get their price and inventories are low and buyers are frustrated because they want to see this adjustment in pricing and it continues to go up, well, the seller says, you know what? Maybe we're going to rent for a year or two. That didn't used to be the case because they can afford to do that. And so the sellers have options if they don't. Basically hit their objectives. And that's frustrating for buyers because buyers want to see this. They want to see a slower market. They see the economy. They read the media, all these challenges. Based on your data, 140 homes asking $1 million above the list price. Is there a bidding competition? How is this happening? So when you've got a special property and you find interest and high wealth is standing in there, a lot of times it turns into ego and pride. And if a spouse wants it and they have the means to do it, and so does the person that you're competing with, now all of a sudden it becomes this 24-hour negotiation that happens very quickly. And it's amazing how you're talking about increments of a half a million dollars at a time to a point where someone says, well, Shoot, we're worth $280 million. My wife really wants it, $7.5 million asking price, give them 15 and tell them we're going to give them 15, and they have two hours to decide, and that's it. No more negotiating, or an hour to decide. So there's high stakes negotiating that's been happening at these levels that get determined in minutes, but it's one of those where we will walk if you don't take these terms, and they go above and beyond because they can afford to. What about the rest of the market? Is this for a certain category of real estate? And is there a cutoff where below a certain value this is not happening? The regular market is what I call A, B, and C. Your A properties that everyone loves, they want the properties, those, and you prepare it properly, you will sell over list price. The B properties, people are analyzing more than I've ever seen. They are looking at everything from the school systems to the like appraisals that are changing now. They're looking at all the little details. They used to say, I'll come in non-contingent, no big deal. And now they're saying, you know what? No, we want to have principally, we want to have a say in this. And the B properties are sitting longer, but they're selling closer to list or possibly a tad under list. And then the C properties, I would recommend those are ones that aren't prepped properly. The sellers are being greedy and they want more than it's worth. Take them off the market because they're not getting offers. So the buying group right now, it's like when you have little kids and you have a soccer game and they're all four-year-olds and they all, as a group, follow the soccer ball. That's the same thing that you have on the A properties. Everybody wants that same A property. It goes for over. The B property, everybody's overanalyzing, and you might get one or two offers, but right around list. And then the C properties, don't even waste your time. Take it off, and either the seller needs to invest into the property, or they need to come back with realistic expectations on price. Is there a certain type of real estate that is sitting in the market a lot longer? And can you tell us what's the price? Is there a price difference between A, B, and C? Yeah, yeah. One of the things that's playing in more so than I've ever seen, school districts have always been important, always have been, right? You want your kids going to the best schools. It's been accelerated and elevated. And I think the cost to play, the pressure that these kids have to go to the best schools, the best public schools, right now, those school districts, it's those areas like North Los Altos, best schools, West Menlo Park. You've got in Southern California, you've got spots in Westlake Village. You've got down Beverly Hills, West LA, those areas where they've got great public schools. Those are the areas that used to be always a little higher. It's gone like this. It's even that much more because the competition to get their kids into those public schools, it's getting intense. And I think when somebody has more money and the wealth continues to grow with that sector, they're going to do whatever it costs to make sure that their kids go to those schools. And so what is that? They're going to outbid people to make sure that they get that property. And since there's not a lot of properties, there's only so much to work with. They don't want to sit and wait another seven months in hopes they're going to get a property in that area of the school district. So that is a trend that I've noticed in the last two years that I've always jokingly said, if you're in an area with a great school district, you might want to give a nice Christmas gift to those principals to make sure that they keep those scores up in those schools. Because those principals, those schools have made you a great deal of equity. Now, in terms of how realistic this is, do you think this is going to continue and is it realistic for all these homes to be valued? I don't know how much. Is it two times the previous values? Has it gone up significantly higher? Yeah. Is it going to continue? I go back to what my dad would always say. And he'd say, I don't know what it is about you real estate people. Because he said, we bought our home for $38,000. And every year at the Christmas party, someone would say that someone sold their house for $60,000. Maybe it's a good time to sell. And he said, for 65 years, it's like when it gets flat, everybody feels like it's a depression. But it continually goes up. And where you never I never think that a price point will get there. It does. So it's much easier to make a million dollars to buy a $6 million home and sell it for $7 million than it was for my parents to buy a $38,000 home and sell it for a million 30 years later. Yes, right now, will it continue? Absolutely. Los Altos crossed over 6 million in most of North Los Altos because of the school district. Now, all of a sudden, in less than a year, we've gone from 6 to over 7 now. Now, over 7 is the price point. How does it get there? Because the people have that kind of wealth. And they're going after it. To answer your question, yes, I believe it's going to continue to go up. And I also build homes. And you can't keep up. The cities cannot keep up with what the need is. What we need is we need low-income housing. And we need a lot of it. And the sad thing is we need more and more low-income housing because this is exactly what's happening in our state. As that continues to push up those prices, so does everything else in the neighborhood and the surrounding areas. Everyone's using those for comps, so everything goes up. Do you see that happening to condos and normal real estate, like million-dollar homes? Condos right now have had a cold or the flu. Because the insurance industry has come in and said, we will not insure older buildings that they have not retrofitted the balconies, and we're insuring these buildings, and then a problem occurs because the building's 55 years old, never fixed, and the HOA doesn't have enough funds to fix it, we're out. As soon as this year's up, we're out. So now all of a sudden you've got to have HOA fees are going to be going up. How has it been funded? How has it not been funded? So condos have this negative stigma. Now, I will say, though, in the last month or two, we started to see condo sales now starting to grow. So we think we're at a low on condos, but the growth is going to be a lot less than it would be on the single family residences. And what about townhomes? Townhomes are similar to condos, but doesn't have the same stigma. And I think it's because the media has been playing out that condos are not a good thing to invest in right now. For that reason, you have to do a lot more research in terms of what you're buying in terms of that building, right? Because the condo is a part of everything else. Townhomes have just been kind of quietly moving along. Nothing great, nothing bad. It just depends on how it's set up, how the HOAs are set up with these townhomes and so forth. And how they're managed. So, but yeah, there's no, not a lot of news on townhomes these days. It's just kind of like evenly, kind of a steady business right now. What are you seeing in terms of the listings that you have? Do you see people come fast or do they sit in the market? Is it depending on the location? What I'm finding right now is that when I have properties where, and I'll help fund to get it prepared. So that it shows right. But I have one right now where it has two side yards and not really a backyard in the way it sits in a cul-de-sac, okay? Because of that, it appraised around the $3 to $3.2 million. We got $3.5 million for it. So you can say, hey, great job. You know, great job. You got above it. But it's also in an area that sells four, five and six million dollar homes, of course, larger lots and nicer homes. But it wasn't an easy sale. A lot of analysis, a lot of people coming back multiple times with their contractors. You know, what can we do with this? And it's you can sell. And I had four when I had offer date, which was on a Wednesday two weeks ago where I thought I was getting four or five or six offers. Up until the very last minute, we had one offer. The one offer was good. It was the... We're fine. We took it. We're happy. But if you went back in time a little bit, we should have had three, four, or five offers. They just got a little scared because the work that was needed to prepare for it was done, but there's nothing you could do about certain locations of the property. Even though you have the school district, you had two side yards, and people don't like side yards. They like backyards. And so little things like that make a big difference, and people walk. So we do see a difference in terms of... Where you're getting multiple offers, like this one last week that went for $10 million. When you walk the property, you think, there is no comp like this. This is the most unique, beautiful architectural design property in San Francisco. And because of that, everyone else felt the same way. So they had to have it. Whereas you get into some regular neighborhoods, they're going to nitpick it. But when people want it and they want to go after it, they go after it hard. And that's when people pay $10 million above the asking price. He's crazy. Those are the ones everyone loves to talk about. Right now, it's very common that the number one question I get from agents, it happened three times, is what is the seller's expectation? That's the first question a buyer's agent will ask. What is the seller's? How did you price this and what's your strategy so that I can manage my buyers properly, so I can communicate with them that you really love this house, but they purposely priced it really low in hopes to To get to this range. You just have to understand that when you make the offer. So sometimes people are putting it in the market at a lower price to get a bunch of offers and start. This is the market. You've got to show people a fair value. And once they see it's a fair value, now it's a supply and demand in competition. If you price it too high, people will overanalyze it and they probably won't make an offer. And it's very respectful too. I will say there's a very respectful way that if you're over 10%, I noticed a lot of agents, is if it's over 10% difference on where you're at. under, like under, like you think you've listed it too high, they won't make the offer. They're interested, but they're going to wait and see if someone else buys it. And if not, they're going to wait for you to make an adjustment in price. Once you make an adjustment in price, that's when they'll come back in for an offer. Matt, based on the buyers you're seeing right now and the way the market is, where would the money come to continue this movement? It's true, Anthropic is going IPO and maybe OpenAI will be the next, but after that, is it going to dry up? Yeah, no, good point. We really look at five areas. The first one is just what you said, the technology stocks. And right now, Anthropic, OpenAI are taking up a lot of the space, but it's also what's happening with NVIDIA. Let me give you a statistic that is fascinating. When NVIDIA's stock price went to $150, the 50% of the employees at NVIDIA, 50% of the employees were worth $20 million or more. Wow. Think about that. Today, it closed at $200. So we have to figure out what those new numbers are. But think about it. 50% of NVIDIA employees are worth $20 million or more when the stock hit $150, and today it just got to $200. Play that out. You have all of that going on. The next thing is going to end up being just residential real estate. What do they do when they have wealth? They go right to the real estate. Then what do they do from the real estate? I have a strategy with my daughters. We wait every four or five years. We take 25% of their equity and we go buy another property because you don't know corporately if they're going to have a 401k or they're going to have profit sharing. But if they own four or five properties and they're collecting rent of $30,000 or $40,000 at a time, then I know as a father, I've protected my daughters. And because of the way things work out, then I've got to make sure I help protect them. And any parent would think of ways of how do we make sure we take care of the next generation. So there's that part. The IPOs, the technology stocks continue to grow. The fourth one is just overall business entrepreneurship. You're going to see more and more entrepreneurs come out because AI is that fear that you're losing your job. Right now, I would describe high tech as. How do you trim a tree or a bush to make it healthy? Well, in the wintertime, you take some of those dead branches and you trim and you clean them up and then the new ones sprout out in the spring. That's exactly what they're doing in high tech. They're still hiring. They're just, it's a different skill base coming in. Well, what happens to that skill base of that software engineer that you had to let go who's incredibly bright? They become entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs will find a way to win. So that's another part, especially in California. That's just the culture. And then the fifth one is going to come from things like solar and the energy and the utilities, all those general businesses right now that continue to grow. And as we have pressure on utilities, especially in the state of California, you see a lot of energy going towards that sector. So those are five areas that we're focusing on right now on where a lot of the wealth is coming from and what's going to help drive a lot of the future growth. Matt McCormick, real estate professional. It was great to have you on California Insider. Please come and update us again. Thank you for having me today. Great to see you. Tell us what you think about this conversation on luxury real estate in California. Did you know this is happening in California? And are you planning to invest in real estate in California? Make sure to tell us in the comments or emails at siamak.californiainsider.com. We read all of your emails and comments. I'm Siamak Orami, this is California Insider. We'll see you next time.