County Home Sales Drop
Ventura County home sales reached the second-highest level for a November since 1988, and the price of a typical house set a record last month, as a resilient market showed that the trauma of Sept. 11 had only a temporary effect on buyers.
Although home sales were down slightly from a robust October, the median price rose to $291,000 in November, up $4,000 from October and $25,000 from the previous year, DataQuick Information Systems reported Wednesday.
The market was bolstered by low interest rates and a shortage of available houses that gave sellers leverage, analysts said.
“This isn’t a big surprise,” economist Mark Schniepp said. “We have a severe housing shortage in Ventura County. And we have a relatively strong economy--we’re not creating many jobs, but we’re not getting rid of them either.”
Sales of houses and condominiums dropped slightly in November to 1,254, down 1.6% from a year ago and about 10% from October.
Last year’s November sales were the highest since 1988.
“But when you really dig into the details, it doesn’t appear there’s a slowdown,” said DataQuick analyst John Karevoll. “I’m pretty sure it is a temporary lull.”
Sales were off last month mostly because there were too few houses to buy and because low interest rates have prompted a months-long torrent of refinancing that has swamped everyone in the industry--lenders, brokers, appraisers and mortgage companies, Karevoll said.
“The infrastructure is maxed out,” he said. “It’s taking two weeks longer for an escrow to close than it did a year ago. But once the wave of refinancing recedes, things will fall back in line and numbers will snap back.”
DataQuick records sales only after the close of escrow.
Even with a sluggish national economy and a two-week standstill after the September terrorism, analysts predict 2001 will be the biggest year for Ventura County housing sales and prices since the 1980s boom.
For the first 11 months of this year, 15,066 houses and condos sold, compared with 13,842 for the same period in 2000, which was also a very good year. And owners are on a pace to sell more than 16,000 homes in 2001--easily the highest since 1988, Karevoll said.
Ventura County sales were particularly strong last month compared with those in other counties in the region: Los Angeles County sales were off 5.8% from the previous November, and sales in Orange and San Diego counties plummeted 15.2% and 16.8% respectively from a year ago.
But prices continued to rise in each county.
Now, with interest rates still low and Ventura County’s housing inventory low due in part to growth restrictions, analysts said home sales and prices should hold up.
“We don’t have enough houses in Ventura County,” Schniepp said. “And we’re down this year in building new homes.”
A report by Irvine-based Meyers Group found sales of new houses--about 10% to 20% of the market--were off 63% in November compared with the same in 2000.
New-home sales dropped from 428 to 157, with sales in new subdivisions down from 214 to 37 in the west county and from 214 to 120 in the east county.
The inventory of new homes for sale has dropped too, from 523 to 331 during the last year, Meyers Group reported.
But there are still plenty of house hunters, said broker Elaine Pettersen, president of the Ventura County Coastal Assn. of Realtors.
“It’s not the boom market of the first quarter of this year, and the higher-end market from $1 million up is soft,” she said. A three-year home sales boom has also prompted some sellers to price their properties at speculative levels.
“But I showed one property six times on Sunday,” Pettersen said. “There are a lot of buyers out there, and interest rates are so favorable right now. If homes are priced right, they move. Those homes at $500,000 or less don’t last, so the inventory is rather low.”
One possible constraint, if a recent trend continues, could be interest rates, which reached a 40-year low in Southern California on Nov. 1, but have increased nearly one percentage point since then.
Rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage for less than $275,000 rose from 5.87% with a two percentage point payment to 6.73% this week, while rates of a zero-point loan increased from 6.37% to 7.23%, said Earl Peattie, president of Mortgage News Co., which surveys mortgage rates in California.
The volatility was prompted by continuing good news in Afghanistan and predictions that the national recession will be short-lived. That has boosted the stock market, and raised long-term interest rates because they tend to go up in good times.
“It’s been bad news on rates,” Peattie said. “It’s not that 7% is a bad rate, but since we got down in the fives, which hasn’t happened before, it makes you question what a good rate is.”
Peattie said, however, that he thinks the housing shortage will prop up the market, especially in coastal counties, even if interest rates continue upward.
“Home sales are more dependent upon demand these days,” he said, “because there really is a huge deficit right now.”
Ventura County’s strong November performance was led by sharp price increases in the Santa Clara Valley, where Fillmore and Santa Paula saw price hikes of more than $70,000 per house in a year.
That is partly because the coastal housing shortage has pushed demand inland, real estate agents said.
Conversely, Simi Valley experienced a small drop in the median price of a house because fewer high-priced new homes were sold.
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Ventura County House Sales
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November 2000 November 2001 Number Median Number Median City / ZIP Code of sales price of sales price CAMARILLO 93010 58 $272,000 59 $317,273 93012 63 $265,500 61 $303,000 FILLMORE 93015 27 $210,000 32 $281,000 MOORPARK 93021 75 $335,000 58 $393,250 OAK PARK 91377 23 $290,000 27 $421,000 OAK VIEW 93022 13 $229,500 5 $275,000 OJAI 93023 24 $273,750 31 $330,000 OXNARD 93030 122 $251,500 97 $274,000 93033 47 $177,000 64 $207,250 93035 46 $269,250 61 $317,250 PORT HUENEME 93041 31 $165,000 35 $183,000 SANTA PAULA 93060 21 $155,454 25 $230,000 SIMI VALLEY 93063 151 $274,000 95 $262,773 93065 165 $260,000 131 $256,000 THOUSAND OAKS 91320 85 $377,500 99 $412,000 91360 53 $287,000 51 $321,000 91361 16 $480,500 28 $336,000 91362 76 $362,500 84 $407,000 VENTURA 93001 41 $200,000 29 $225,500 93003 76 $225,500 116 $283,500 93004 38 $269,750 37 $299,000 COUNTYWIDE * 1,274 $266,000 1,254 $291,000
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Source: DataQuick Information Systems
Ventura County Realty Prices
November 1988-2001
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Total sales Median price 1988 1,466 $203,000 1989 1,057 $225,000 1990 689 $216,000 1991 585 $208,000 1992 817 $204,000 1993 788 $197,000 1994 841 $189,000 1995 927 $193,000 1996 882 $186,000 1997 942 $207,000 1998 1,092 $230,000 1999 1,217 $241,000 2000 1,274 $266,000 2001 1,254 $291,000
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Source: DataQuick Information Systems
