Home Sales in County Up 18.3% in First Period : Real estate: Observers say it is the largest quarterly boost since the late 1980s. But average price drops 1%.

Ventura County home sales for the first quarter of 1994 rose 18.3% compared with the same period last year, signaling an upturn in the local economy, a report released Thursday said.

“This is definitely a good sign,” said Nima Nattagh, a market analyst with TRW REDI, which publishes the report. “I think this is the largest quarterly increase we’ve seen since 1988 or 1989.”

Since January, 1,907 houses have been sold in the county, 279 of them new. However, mirroring a trend across Southern California toward more modestly priced homes, the average sales price countywide dropped by about 1% to $225,845, compared to the first quarter of last year, the report said.

“We’ve seen a lot more smaller and cheaper homes being sold,” Nattagh said.

Most Southern California counties posted higher sales increases than Ventura. Orange County showed the most improvement, up 37.9% from the same time last year. Of the six counties surveyed, only Los Angeles County registered a smaller increase than Ventura--a still significant 14.1%.

For the second March in a row, Oxnard posted the highest number of sales in Ventura County, with 161 houses sold last month compared to 114 in March, 1993.

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Realtor Bob Krakover, owner of Pacific Shores Realty and vice president of the Oxnard Harbor Assn. of Realtors, said the city has some of the lowest prices in the county, a big draw for first-time buyers.

“It’s almost like somebody turned on the faucet full blast,” Krakover said. “I haven’t felt this good about the market since 1990.”

The number of homes sold in Oxnard’s beach and harbor areas showed a steep increase, from two in March last year to 54 last month, the report said.

“We’ve got some of the finest beach communities in Southern California,” Krakover said. “It’s been virtually a secret, but people are finding out about us.”

In Ventura, March home sales showed a 50% increase over March, 1993. Realtor Gordon Campbell, with Coldwell Banker, said homes in the $205,000 to $240,000 range are the quickest sellers and that owners are getting their asking prices.

“What I’ve noticed at our multi-listing meetings each Thursday is that we used to get a lot of price reductions,” he said. “People would be knocking the prices down because they weren’t selling. But lately I’ve noticed far fewer.”

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Simi Valley showed a smaller increase from March, 1993, about 18%. But realtor Susie Hill, with Century 21 Hilltop, said her office has been crowded with buyers in the last month. She said she expects sales to rise based on the numbers of customers she is working with now.

“They’re just continually going up. We thought everything would have come to a screeching halt after Jan. 17,” Hill said, referring to the Northridge earthquake. “But that hasn’t been the case at all.”

However, analysts said the effect of the earthquake is showing up in Los Angeles County, particularly in the new homes market, where sales dropped 14.5%, the only decrease registered in the report.