Quiet! Robbery In Progress. Ventura County Real Estate Doing’s for Week Ending October 11, 2008
October 12th, 2008 Categories: Weekly Real Estate Activity In Ventura County
The storms are hitting us left and right and there will be at least one or two more.
The road looks foreboding but there is sunshine after the storm passes. Just hope that it passes quickly.
We are starting to see and hear to see what happened in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco. Our Congress fell asleep at the switch and U. S. citizens will have to carry the brunt of the cost. Not much has been heard from Frank and Dodd and others that pushed the legislation that created this mess.
Beginning now will be the biggest show on earth with all of the finger pointing that will start and the culprits who initiated the problem quietly sitting in some corner waiting for the storm to pass.
Continuing is the melt down of Wall Street…….these are the experts who know how to handle money. Say what? Again U. S. citizens will carry the brunt of the cost.
Things happen in three’s. So what is the next surprise in store for the citizens of the United States? I can hardly wait.
As mentioned previously States have a huge problem funding pension plans and the problem gets larger as time passes. This will be a huge nut to crack. Monies to cover this will be beyond our imagination. But I do not think that this is the next problem.
How will all of this impact real estate? I think the worse is over for real estate. Getting loans will continue to be a problem but if a person has 20% down; has a 40-42% high end debt ratio (or lower); has good FICO scores, can show that they can pay for the property there is no problem.
This was the standard used until Clinton and Congress in the 1990’s decided that everyone should have a home and many people were offered opportunities to buy with nothing down and not to worry if they could not afford the payments, they still could have a house. There is logic in this someplace but I fail to see it. If some one knows enlighten me, please.
However if Congress sees fit to have a house in every pot then the problem will continue and real estate will be impacted significantly.
Ventura County:
As shown in the chart below, sales have slowed as expected. Listings continue to decrease; the number of days a home is on the market before it sells has decreased; the variance between list price and sales price has fallen this past week to below 3%. Expired properties have shown a significant decrease over the last few weeks.
What does it all mean? People are digging in and waiting out the market. If they do not have to move they are willing to stay put for the time being.
If one feels that they are stuck in Ventura County be thankful. There are not very many places in the world better than Ventura County. If nothing else there are the beaches and most certainly that is a fun place to be.
The County overall is still in good shape but further increases in unemployment and the decrease in job opportunities will start taking its toll. California is on a tight rope and the State’s political machine in Sacramento is a mirror image of what is happening in Washington.
Your comments please.
