The Ventura County Star reported on October 26th that home prices and sales dropped in Ventura County and throughout all of Southern California in September. Their report states that the median sale price for a Ventura County home in September was $535,000 in August and dropped 6.5% to $500,000 in September. If you read our August 2016 Ventura County Real Estate Market Analysis and our September 2016 Ventura County Real Estate Market Analysis, you will see that we reported the average sale price in August was $585,854 and the average sale price in September was $572,087, equating to a 3.4% decrease in price. Please note that the Ventura County Star report is using median price whereas we use average price. But in both cases, you can see there was a decrease in sale price.
According to the Ventura County Star’s numbers, 919 homes were sold in Ventura County in September, down from 1070 homes sold in August. Our analysis has the number of homes sold in August at 702 and the number of homes sold in September at 611. For our calculations, we do not use lots/lands or commercial properties. We also only use the cities of Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Ojai, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Simi Valley, Santa Paula, Thousand Oaks, and Ventura. The Ventura County Star does not specify what criteria they use, so we do not have the data to compare the differences in their numbers.
The Ventura County Star report also goes on to say that all of the counties in Southern California (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura) experienced lower sale prices except for San Bernardino County, whose prices rose from $280,000 in August to $298,250 in September. Ventura County experienced the largest decrease in sale price from August to September of all Southern California counties. Although this may be the case, Southern California has seen a year-over-year increase in median price from $435,000 to $460,000, a 5.7% increase. Finally, the Ventura County Star says that the summer of 2016 had the second highest number of home sales since 2009.
As we noted in our other blog posts, Ventura County residents should not be alarmed by the decrease in home sales and prices. These stats tend to creep lower after the summer due to families looking to buy their homes and settle in before the kids start school. We will continue to keep our eye on the market to see if any long term trends can be spotted.
For those who are interested, the median sale prices for the rest of Southern California are as follows:
- Orange County: $640,000
- Los Angeles County: $526,000
- San Diego County: $495,000
- Riverside County: $334,500
- San Bernardino County: $298,250
September 2016 Ventura County Real Estate Market Analysis