The Venice real estate market started July 4, 1905. Millionaire Abbot Kinney discovered Santa Monica in the 1890s. After he built a successful resort there he looked south. Where other men saw a swamp, Kinney saw the Coney Island of the West. He called it "Venice of America" and it was the West's first theme park. Ninety-four years before Las Vegas had the Venetian, Kinney imagined singing gondoliers, canals, amusement parks, piers, hotels and buildings in the Venetian Style. Then the history of Los Angeles happened. The film industry moved west. The city spread toward the cheap land at the coast. Beverly Hills, and the Beverly Hills real estate market, was founded the next year. The Hollywood sign went up in 1923. You know the rest. Raymond Chandler, the Second World War, China Town and gangsta rap.

The Good About Real Estate For Sale in Venice

Venice Beach sums up all that. Venice is where Jim Morrison invented The Doors, skateboarding was born and Arnold Schwarzenegger lifted weights. The beach is three miles long, wide as a football field and the weather is perfect. The sunsets are spectacular. At Christmas the palm trees blink red and green. The Good Year Blimp overhead flashes "Merry… Xmas." Basketball hustlers play here. There is still a pier and every day tourists crowd the boardwalk. Venice walk flaunts and sells everything from paintings to tattoos to medical marijuana. Eccentrics juggle bowling balls and knives, swallow fire, eat glass, dance the hula and tell your fortune. People live here, too. The Venice real estate market churns like the action on the walk. Most real estate for sale in Venice is just a few blocks inland where galleries, boutiques, bars, cafes and restaurants abound.

The Bad About Venice Real Estate

Venice Beach is also where all of Los Angeles collides. It is a problem that the Venice real estate market and the Beverly Hills real estate market barely five miles inland do not share. Venice has an edge that Beverly Hills does not. Some adventurers like it but Venice is not for everybody. Oakwood is one of the oldest black neighborhoods in Los Angeles and it is not one of the neighborhoods that has improved with age. Oakwood, which locals call Ghost Town, is a battleground between two gangs called the Shoreline Crips and Venice 13. Junkies trickle down to Venice beach at night.

The Venice Real Estate Market Now

So homes in the Venice real estate market cost less than the Beverly Hills real estate market but housing prices are high nonetheless. The median sales price of homes in Beverly Hills $1,610,000 and in Venice it is only $925,000. The average asking price for homes in Venice is $1,375,502. The most expensive piece of real estate for sale in Venice in December 2010 is home and work space of renowned sculptor Robert Graham. The home is 200 feet from the beach and Graham is asking for $18 million.