Home Sales Near Full Recovery, Analysts Say : Real estate: Ventura County records its 10th straight month of increased transactions.
Ventura County’s real estate market has almost recovered from the effects of recession after a 10-month stretch of increasing home sales, industry analysts said Thursday.
“We’ve had 10 consecutive months of increasing sales and that signifies a trend to me,” said Nima Nattagh, a market analyst with TRW REDI, which publishes monthly reports on home sales.
The research firm’s most recent report focuses on the first five months of 1994, but Nattagh said sales have been steadily rising throughout Southern California since last summer.
Nattagh attributed increased sales from January to May to low interest rates, an improving economic climate, and the availability of affordable homes.
The number of sales in the county from January to May increased 18.2% over sales in the same five-month period of 1993. Some real estate agents expressed worry over steadily decreasing prices--down an average of 2.2% from 1993 to 1994--but Nattagh said low prices were crucial to driving the market toward full recovery.
“Prices are still fairly soft,” Nattagh said. “But I think that is a blessing in disguise in that it encourages more first-time buyers to get into the market. I think they will be the backbone of the recovery. If you don’t have first-time buyers, you don’t have move-up buyers either.”
Reflecting that trend, sales were up in most of the county’s 10 cities, but buying was concentrated in lower-priced areas, including Oxnard, Simi Valley and Ventura, where average purchase prices were less than $200,000.
In Oxnard, 154 homes were sold in May, averaging $184,600, compared to last May when 107 homes were sold at an average cost of $196,658.
Bob Edwards, president of the Oxnard Harbor Assn. of Realtors, which includes 22 realtors from Oxnard, Channel Islands Harbor and Port Hueneme, said most of the buyers are first-time owners.
“Primarily the people buying were formerly renters,” Edwards said. “We’re seeing a lot of people in the agriculture industry, with two to three wage earners in the family.”
Port Hueneme is popular with buyers right now, he said, as well as the west side of Oxnard. Most of the houses Edwards is selling are 25 to 35 years old and have been newly refurbished.
“The majority of them are going for under $175,000,” Edwards said. “These are affordable houses, three or four bedrooms. We have a good market for that here.”
But Edwards said he wasn’t ready to proclaim the market restored to pre-recession levels.
“This is an almost average market,” he said. “Put it this way: On a scale from A to F, we’ve been in a D- market for the last few years. Today we’re in a C to C- market. It’s still not quite average but it’s better than it was.”
In Simi Valley, the average price of property sold in the last six months was $194,948, a drop of 5.2% from the same period in 1993, according to the Simi Valley-Moorpark Assn. of Realtors.
Shanon Wolf, the association’s president, said Simi Valley continues to attract buyers seeking safe havens to raise children. She also characterized prices as “soft,” but predicted they would begin to increase soon. The difference between list price and final sale price on homes has narrowed considerably, she said.
“It’s going to be interesting to see what our July and August figures are like,” Wolf said. “We’ve had a lot of clients in looking in the middle to upper price range lately.”
Ventura County Home Sales
City May, 1993 May,1994 ZIP code No. sales Avg. price No. sales Avg. price CAMARILLO 93010 25 $220,114 73 $234,871 93012 24 $285,000 29 $340,426 93066 1 $340,000 2 $448,000 FILLMORE 93015 10 $182,250 12 $162,455 MOORPARK 93021 43 $261,890 60 $202,500 OAK PARK 91301 29 $294,643 50 $316,720 OAK VIEW 93022 3 $171,833 4 $171,500 OJAI 93023 24 $272,891 22 $261,864 OXNARD 93030 53 $195,269 79 $176,351 93033 28 $153,628 35 $140,803 93035 26 $241,077 40 $236,650 PORT HUENEME 93041 18 $150,029 28 $164,019 SANTA PAULA 93060 13 $181,346 31 $166,548 SIMI VALLEY 91311 1 $147,000 1 $120,045 91307 4 $438,333 5 $522,200 93063 60 $203,247 57 $189,123 93065 107 $206,144 84 $190,614 THOUSAND OAKS 91362 60 $346,412 55 $340,824 91320 44 $243,773 63 $256,425 91360 49 $227,195 64 $230,689 91361 16 $316,313 28 $318,904 VENTURA 93001 29 $299,411 39 $184,300 93003 48 $196,770 57 $195,421 93004 27 $197,327 34 $200,934
Source: TRW REDI Property Data
