It’s late Friday afternoon (yesterday) and I’m clearing out old paperwork that inevitably stacks up on the counter behind my desk, when I stumble upon a ripped out page from an auction catalog from earlier this year. Wow – look at those great deals!

I’d been curious last March to see what the ultimate results would be from those “great deals” so I’d ripped out the page and promised myself that someday I’d check out the final bid prices to see what really transpired on each home.

I’d circled the bid items for our local towns in Hueneme, Ventura, Camarillo and Oxnard – what did I discover yesterday on those homes?

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Just like last week’s LA Times front page article, we’re starting to see lots of media attention given to stabilization and rising prices throughout the country. Today’s Wall Street Journal had an article entitled “A Toe in the Water”, which was more about long term investing, and a sub heading called “The Case for Real Estate”. Also, today’s Case-Shiller report indicated that for the first time in 3 years prices rose about 3% over the previous quarter, another strengthening sign things are turning around. Next week we’ll be checking our local statistics to see what August looked like.

Leslie and I were out of town for a couple days last week, and while skimming the few days of back issues of the Los Angeles Times I noticed the main headline for Wednesday proclaimed “Southern California home sales and prices rise in July”. Followers of our blog know that prices of homes in our area bottomed out this spring and have been trending upward. But you also know foreclosures and distressed sales are still keeping rapid increases of values in check. Inventory levels are generally low, and there may be a flurry of last minute first time buyers out there who come to realize the $8,000 credit expires December 1.

Our office is across Victoria Avenue from the County’s Hall of Justice where the majority of foreclosure auctions in Ventura County are held every day at 11:00. I was interested in a particular commercial property scheduled for sale yesterday, and so for those interested in what happens at a foreclosure auction read on… Read the rest of this article »

The inventory levels of homes for sale crept up a bit in our latest snap shot. Remember that inventory levels are constantly changing – the snap shot this morning will be different from a snap shot this afternoon as new homes come on the market and other homes are sold, but it shows trends. Oxnard still has very low inventory levels which accounts for the over bidding we’ve been seeing in the past few weeks.