On Friday I met with an investor who owns a number of rental properties by the SeaBee base. I told him, “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news”. The good news is that inventory is way down from last summer. The bad news (for investors like him) is that property values have plunged. Here is detailed data of active listings, homes in escrow, and sold listings for a micro section of Oxnard: 

First, last year there seemed to be a million distressed properties on the market in Oxnard. For this particular investor, we were roughly looking between Ventura Road and Saviers, and Durley Park (Hill St) on the north and Pleasant Valley on the south.

Area I was looking at for my investor.

Our MLS system allows agents to map any area we want and the screen shot above is the area I’m looking at.

Unfortunately, I never kept the data I pulled for this area last summer, but again, it seemed like there were a “million” homes for sale. What did I find today about this same area?

First, only 57 homes are on the market.

Second, 52 homes are pending (in escrow).

Third, 55 homes sold (closed escrow) in the 2 months of January and February, and finally,

Fourth, 63 new listings came on the market in January and February.

What does this all mean? National news media has been stating that there’s about a 9 – 10 month supply of inventory for sale nationally. Not so for this micro area of Oxnard! There’s only about a 2 month supply.

It was very surprising to see how close those numbers were to each other. That’s why it’s getting tougher for buyers (and their agents!) out there.

Nevertheless, there’s still considerable pressure on pricing, because buyers are still trying to get lower price points (and there’s a lot of fear out there), but we’re starting to see some “push back” from sellers.