Hello Folks,
We may have turned the corner in Ventura County. This is the first month I have seen an across
the board increase in the total number of properties that have come to market
during the past month! The total number of
properties for sale has increased in most towns as well. Of the ten city
markets I track, I only saw Agoura Hills and Westlake Village a bit low on the
number of properties for sale. However they are experiencing strong sales with
61 homes sold in April compared to 44 in March. This may mean that their market
is so hot that they cannot maintain their inventory – it sells as soon as it
comes on the market!
January 2013 was a better month than December 2012. February
continued the trend upwards but March took kind of a breather with weak
showings in most of the numbers I track. Not unusual from my experience as
people tighten their belts to pay taxes in April. There was some stock market
volatility during the early months of this year as well. I don’t pretend to be
able to separate cause and effect on our local real estate market, but the
numbers for April are very encouraging with numbers bouncing back from March
and in most cases exceeding the numbers we saw earlier in February.
Oxnard and Port Hueneme have seen strong, steady improvement
in their markets this last month with numbers returning to the level of
January’s sales after dipping down in Feb and March. The number of properties
that sold in January were 92 vs April’s 138!
The number of properties for sale are back up to 165 homes - with
74 of those homes coming to market just last month. 138 homes actually sold
last month, so it’s easy to see there is strong demand – nearly twice as many
homes sold as came new to the market last month. Guess what that is going to do
to prices in Oxnard and Port Hueneme?! We are going to see some very strong
home prices as this year continues to build.
Camarillo’s market has performed in similar fashion to Oxnard
and Port Hueneme but on a much smaller scale. The current inventory numbers are
back to January’s levels but properties sold are up from 42 homes sold in
January to 81 for April! Again, like
Oxnard and Port Hueneme, monthly sales doubled from the start of the year.
Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park have seen the number of homes
on the market increase from 102 in January to 133 in April. In the 31 days of
January we had 53 homes come to market. In the 30 days of April we saw 79 homes
come to market. The number of homes which actually sold in January was 66,
almost doubling to 125 homes in April. These are great numbers!
Moorpark has seen it’s inventory slowly increase from
January’s 28 homes to April’s 38 homes on the market. In January there were 9
homes that came to market during the month, which has increased to 21 homes in
the month of April. Demand has remained surprisingly flat with 28 homes
actually selling in January compared to 30 homes in April.
Simi Valley and Wood Ranch have seen some major market
improvements despite the same dips in the market for February and March that
everone else experienced. We had 46 homes come to market in January and 60
homes come to market in April. 96 homes sold in January and 113 homes sold this
last April.
Interestingly, we had 152 homes go into escrow in January and
175 homes in April so obviously there is a bit higher demand for homes in this
market than Moorpark.
Ventura has had the biggest struggle regaining it’s market
inventory. Inventory has still not recovered from February and March’s dip.
There are currently 90 homes available in Ventura compared to 168 last January.
April saw 38 homes come to market compared to 88 in January. Still the demand
appears to be pretty constant with 84 homes selling last January and 81 homes
in April.
With roughly half as many homes coming to market each month as
selling each month – demand is strong and price increases will continue. Once
prices reach the level where folks can afford to sell their homes without
taking a loss, I think we will see many more homes coming to market in Ventura.
That time is rapidly approaching.
Take care,
Mark Thorngren
