Spotlight on the Ventura County Housing Market

We all love Ventura County's stunningly good weather, its sandy beaches, the gorgeous views. Nevertheless, the Ventura County housing market has hit the same funk as the rest of the nation. DataQuick tells us that lenders filed 1,059 notices of foreclosures on Ventura County homes for the second quarter of 2007. This is a 134.3% increase over the second quarter of 2006 when lenders filed 452 foreclosures for Ventura County homes. While this falls below the Southern California regional average of 151.2%, it has still driven the stock of inventory up and the price of homes in most of Ventura County down. So it may not surprise anyone to learn that Ventura County is one of Southern California's harder hit counties in terms of home value.

As you move south along the 101, you will find that single-family homes in Thousand Oaks and Westlake have either held their value or seen only minimal price decline. Moorpark has also held its value over most of Ventura County. As you move north along the 101, the cities of Camarillo, Oxnard, and Ventura have some of the worst-hit neighborhoods in terms of property values for single family homes. In a few cases, we see neighborhoods (generally consisting of lower value, smaller homes) where single family homes have lost more than 19% of their value over the past year.

As always, you need to look at these areas not just by city, but also by zip code. Thus, while Oxnard single family residences as a whole have declined about 5% in prices, if you break Oxnard down by zip code, you see that the worst hit is the courthouse and government center's 93033 area. The more expensive homes such as those found in Oxnard's 93036 have actually gained a little ground improving 5% over last year. On the other hand, Camarillo, which lies midway along the 101 between Westlake and Ventura, saw moderate declines in the value of its single-family homes compared to the more northern cities of Oxnard and Ventura.

At this time, it appears that the more expensive single-family homes in Ventura County as well as homes that are more convenient to the greater Los Angeles employment market are doing a better job of holding their value. But this may well change in the near future. The primary reason the lower-cost neighborhoods have declined the most is that home buyers in those neighborhoods are primarily first-time home buyers, buyers with less than stellar credit, who cannot obtain conventional mortgage financing. As the global credit crunch spreads, we will see softening prices spread into the more expensive properties.

It is a buyer's market; Thus, if you must sell, your price needs to reflect this fact. Unfortunately, for those who invested in condominiums, this segment of the market has fallen fast and hard in nearly every segment and nearly every zip code. In some areas of Ventura County, condominiums have lost more than 30% of their value over last year.

Few industry experts challenge the fact that real estate prices will fall over the next few years as the market adjusts. The question is whether the market will recover in late 2009 or if this correction will continue into 2012. In an attempt to address this, President George W. Bush stood beside Secretary Alfonso Jackson, of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Secretary Henry Paulson Jr., of the Department of Treasury, and issued a statement on Friday, Aug. 31, 2007, in which he affirmed the value of home ownership.

In support of that goal, he addressed several factors that have made obtaining a mortgage in Ventura County extremely difficult. The $580,000 median home value in Ventura County has traditionally meant that new homebuyers cannot afford the required down payment to obtain federally insured mortgages. President Bush specifically addressed this issue in his call to expand the Federal Housing Administration's ability to provide federally insured loans by lowering the required down payment and increasing the amount of loan that the FHA can insure. But no matter what measures the federal government takes, we can expect the real estate market in Ventura County to see significant declines through at least 2009 and perhaps far longer.