Leslie and I are trying to get a handle on the dizzying flow of news coming out of Washington and Wall Street this weekend.  As the late Senator Everett Dirksen famously once said, “A Billion Here, A Billion There, Pretty Soon You’re Talking Real Money”. Read the rest of this article »

Here are the August sold statistics. We continue seeing price point declines in Oxnard because of bank foreclosures, but Camarillo and Ventura appear to be close to July numbers. Based on square footage prices, condos have gone up in value in Camarillo and Ventura, while Oxnard was about the same.

Because the monthly statistics can vary quite a bit, after we see the September  statistics, we’ll combine the monthly stats into quarterly stats and see how trends are looking.

September has been super busy, what with the drop in interest rates, lots of REO properties coming on the market – buyers seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Here are the numbers for the August pending sales.

“Pendings” are homes that have just gone into escrow. A buyer and seller have agreed to terms, and the buyer has put hard cash (the security deposit) into escrow. We track pendings as a leading indicator of real estate activity.

August shows TWICE the number of pendings for Ventura compared to 2007. Oxnard had 4 TIMES the number of pendings compared to last year, and even Camarillo had more pendings than last year.

September’s newsletter deals with the crisis and turmoil in the financial markets. It also talks about a Chinese concept, and what many Westerners believe the Chinese word “crisis” means (Danger + Opportunity).

Is that a true concept? Skim over the newsletter and see!

I just wrote a post a couple of days ago about the great loan available from the State of California for first time homebuyers who were either disabled or had a disabled family member living with them.  It was a 4%, 30 year fixed rate loan.

I have to eat my words – the State just jumped the interest rate up a whopping 1 1/2% to 5.5% yesterday. It’s obviously due to the turmoil in the financial markets. Many people are now waiting for cooler heads to prevail on Wall Street.