Welcome! Buying or selling a home or investment property is a major decision. Don and Leslie Nelson are full time Realtors who have been active here for almost 30 years.
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By Leslie | October 20, 2011
I recently got the attached letter from Chase on a short sale transaction I closed last summer. Hmmm…now you know why we just “love” short sales!
By Don | October 14, 2011
Leslie posted her detailed statistics for Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo yesterday and I was very curious to see if I could see any trends starting to emerge. With all the negative housing news in the media (nationally), I wanted to see what was going on in our neck of the woods.
What surprised me was the trending of number of homes sold over the past 12 months - trend lines are up strongly for all 3 cities.
As far as trending over the past 12 months for home prices, Camarillo has softened, but Ventura and Oxnard have remained flat, which isn’t bad all things considered.
Leslie has started showing the percentages of distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales) and it’ll be interesting to see how those change over time. It would appear lenders are beginning to get more aggressive in starting foreclosures so I wouldn’t be surprised to see those percentages begin to increase a bit over the next several months.
By Leslie | October 13, 2011
A new feature of trendlines has been added recently to the three 12 month graphs to give a quick visualization of the numbers sold and the sold prices in Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo.
Also featured is the percentage of single family homes that were distressed sales in the month of September are:
Ventura – 37% Oxnard – 68% Camarillo – 47%
Sold prices – Single family homes in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:
Sold prices – Condos in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:
Numbers sold – Single family homes in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:
Detailed data for single family homes sold in:
Detailed data for condos sold in:
Detailed monthly data for pendings (in escrow) – single family homes and condos:
All data is taken from the Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo MLS.
By Don | October 4, 2011
With the 4 wings all finished now on my Tiger Moth project, and after attending a huge airshow in Wisconsin this summer (EAA’s Oshkosh show), I got the crazy idea – could I power my Tiger Moth on electricity? How cool would that be?!? The short answer is no – because energy storage isn’t there yet.
But this past week, NASA (with Google sponsoring prize $$) had a competition under the CAFE (Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency) foundation with a top prize of $1,350,000 for the winner, to be announced on Monday (yesterday).
Because most of the aircraft were electric (or hybrid), I was very interested so Leslie (bless her!) and I went up over the weekend to see these e-airplanes. Who won?
By Don | September 30, 2011
Being in the business, we get this question from time to time – and it’s impossible to answer in a sound bite! The short answer is that there are too many variables for a quick number like 4%.
What kind of loan? Conventional, FHA? What’s the loan to value (LTV)? What’s your credit score? Do you want an interest rate lock? For how long? How much is the loan? Over the $417k conforming limit? What’s your back end ratio (debt to income ratio)?
Let’s take a look at a recent matrix to see how, with conventional financing, variations in FICO scores and loan to value (LTV) amounts affect interest rates…
By Don | September 30, 2011
Starting tomorrow, the loan limit will drop from $729k to $598,000 ($625k in other markets) as Fannie and Freddie attempt to reduce their financial risks in the shaky housing market. Taxpayers have kept the 2 giant organizations afloat with billions of $$, and policy makers are trying to wean the wobbly real estate industry away from further subsidies.
But with billions having already gone to bankroll the banking and other industries (GM), a lot of us in the real estate industry think now’s not the time to reduce the loan limits in the expensive east and west coast markets.
By Don | September 26, 2011
The trend line for 
Ventura County Notice of Defaults (first stage of a foreclosure) had seen a gentle decrease over the past 12 months until August, when the numbers dramatically shot up.
Specifically, July saw 401 Notice of Defaults but August recorded 678, an almost 70% increase. It takes a minimum of 3 months before a Notice of Trustee Sale can be recorded, and another 21 days before the auction can be set, so we won’t see a spike in REO properties until at least the end of the year.
Also, we’ve seen a lot of properties where the lender sets an auction date, but delays the sale month to month for many months. Shadow inventory issues??
Whatever the reason, it would appear lenders are rapidly stepping up their foreclosures in the County.
Many thanks to www.ForeclosureListService.com for the info…
By Don | September 23, 2011
I’ve just come back from 2 1/2 weeks doing home inspections for FEMA in New Jersey and New York for homeowners hit with hurricane Irene and hit again with torrential downpours from tropical storm Ike.
But I was pulled from that area and sent to Binghamton, New York, where they had just been hit with a 100 year flood. The Susquehanna river had flooded major parts of the city forcing the relocation of hundreds from a senior complex, sending many of them to a rapidly organized shelter at the Events Center (large basketball arena) at the University of Binghamton (SUNY). Many were housed in the “Med unit” which was a quasi medical unit staffed by medical personnel.
It’s tough to lose a lifetime of memories in a major disaster. Another inspector shared how she inspected a heavily damaged home where the lady of the home had just given birth 8 days before her home was flooded. But FEMA has learned from Katrina – it flooded the area with inspectors and had fast turnaround times for those in need.
For me, it was a big change of pace from the “routine” of real estate! We worked literally from sun-up to sun-down, 7 days a week. I skipped lunch every day, did a lot of walking, and lost weight to boot!
By Leslie | September 14, 2011
A new feature of trendlines has been added this month to the three 12 month graphs to give a quick visualization of the numbers sold and the sold prices in Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo.
Also featured is the percentage of single family homes that were distressed sales in the month of August are:
Ventura – 51% Oxnard – 57% Camarillo – 22%
Sold prices – Single family homes in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:
Sold prices – Condos in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:
Numbers sold – Single family homes in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:
Read more….
Detailed data for single family homes sold in:
Detailed data for condos sold in:
Detailed monthly data for pendings (in escrow) – single family homes and condos:
All data is taken from the Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo MLS.
By Don | August 23, 2011
What did I get myself into I thought as I volunteered to be a “pylon dog” at the Camarillo air show?!?
The air show organizers tried to bring a high level of excitement and buzz to the show this year by having another organization bring their race to Camarillo. Seven aerobatic planes would “race” down the field, slaloming between 60′ – 70′ high inflatable pylons – cool!
I envisioned having to stand next to these things while the planes screamed just over my head. I’d been told that in practice (at another field), the planes got as low as 7′ – but I figured, that’s okay – I’m less than 6′ tall, so no problem…
Besides, I was told the FAA had set a minimum floor of 15′ for these guys – lots of room!
But ultimately, there was no racing because of lots of complications between the race organizers and the FAA. – bummer.
But what a beautiful weekend for an air show – lots of sun, noise and smoke as all types of planes flew throughout the weekend.
And we put up the pylons each day to give the crowd an idea of what the race may have looked like – maybe next year! Read the rest of this article »