Turning the Corner in Ventura County

 

 

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