Real Estate Slump Over, Analysts Say

With the amount of available commercial space in Ventura County holding mostly steady for a fourth consecutive quarter, market analysts declared Thursday that the area’s real estate woes are over.

“This quarter definitely marks the end of Ventura County’s commercial real estate depression, and we mean depression,” said Jerry Pelton, managing officer of the Ventura and Santa Barbara offices of CB Commercial Real Estate Group.

Pelton, who released the company’s report for the third quarter of 1996, said continued migration from the Los Angeles area, competitive lease rates and an improving local economy contributed to the recovery of the industrial, office and retail commercial real estate market.

With availability of space on the decline, rental rates have begun to inch upward to a point where new construction makes economic sense, Pelton said.

Expansion among local businesses was the most significant factor in the vacancy decline in industrial space, said Doug Shaw, an industrial property broker with CB Commercial.

“People thought we were crying wolf when we said we were running out of [industrial] space,” Shaw said. “Now we are out.”

The industrial space vacancies declined to 9.3% in the third quarter, from 9.9% the previous quarter and 10% the same quarter in 1995.

The county’s overall retail space vacancies declined slightly to 6.3%. But a significant gap in retail space availability between the east and west county remained. East county vacancies are at 3.7%, while vacancies in the west county are more than double at 8.6%.

At 10.3%, availability of office space in the east county is down nearly four percentage points from a year ago. But in the west county, it stands at 18.6%, nearly two percentage points higher than last year.