Realtors for Ventura | Oxnard | Camarillo

On Monday night, the City Council spent most of the evening considering various housing related issues. Culminating almost 3 years of stakeholder involvement (homeless advocates, landlords, city staff, etc), the Community Development Director presented the City Council its report.

Much of the discussion concerns “bootlegged” dwelling units (converted garages, un-permited room additions, etc), but what concerns a lot of Realtors is a proposal for an official, notarized inspection of all home sales in the City, provided to the City, conducted by a local certified home inspector (the “Local Resale Inspection Report Program”). See page 9 in the report. There would be fees involved for this report to the City.

In my personal opinion, this is completely unwarranted and unjustified. There is no reason the City needs to become so intimately involved in this intrusive manner of “big brother”. There will now be hundreds of dollars of extra cost for a home inspector to go to City hall to review the permit file, then act as an appraiser and measure the square footage of the home, determine number of rooms, etc, then have his report notarized before turning it into the City.

Unbelievable! How can this creeping bureaucracy continue? Have these people lost their common sense? I say – enough already!!

Here you’ll find quarterly and monthly real estate activity in chart form for homes sold in Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo and also the data particulars for each city. All data is taken from the Ventura MLS, Oxnard MLS and Camarillo MLS.

NOTE: While the following sold prices and numbers sold reveal some change – or no change, it’s important to see at the end the Detailed statistics for pendings (in escrow) for true trends indicating where the housing market is going – not where it’s been!!

Sold prices – Single family homes in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:

The monthly chart shows sold prices are softer year over year for all three cities while comparing January of 2011 with December 2010 – Ventura remains unchanged and Camarillo and Oxnard have softened.

• Quarterly graph
  
• 12 month graph

Sold prices – Condos in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:

Sold prices for condos in the three cities remains practically unchanged year over year and for January compared to the previous month of December.

• Quarterly graph
• 12 month graph

Numbers sold – Single family homes in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:

Year over year shows an increase for Camarillo while Ventura and Oxnard remain steady. Comparing one month of activity shows the number of homes sold in all three cities is softer for January as to December.

• Quarterly graph
• 12 month graph

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In our January newsletter, I said the media tends to paint all the housing markets across the country with one brush stroke. But Ventura County doesn’t fit areas like the Inland Empire or the Stockton area with severe  falling home prices and numerous foreclosures. Yes, we’ve been impacted to some degree, but see for yourself our data tracking for 2010. The newsletter has 2 important charts showing quarterly trends in sales and prices, but you can see those trend charts directly here for sales numbers and here for sold prices.

The last Congress created the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (www.fcic.gov) to answer that question and yesterday they gave the official answer in a 545 page report. So who’s to blame? Read the rest of this article »

…and it was disappointing. Last night on the news, and this morning in the LA Times, we heard that the Air Force was launching the biggest rocket ever launched (a Delta IV heavy lift) from the West coast, and in a spur of the moment I convinced Leslie to skip work today and run with me up to Vandenberg to watch it blast off.

Having made a special week long trip in November to Florida to see a shuttle launch (no go – Discovery is still on the ground!), I thought maybe this might have the same awesome display of noise, power and deep rumble. Nope.

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