Median Price of New Homes Soars 20% Since ’98 to $350,000

Grab a house and hang on to it.

If new homes sales continue at their present pace in Ventura County there will be no homes left to purchase by the end of summer, according to a report published by the Meyers Group, a Santa Monica-based real estate research and consulting firm.

Bob Bray, an analyst with the group, doesn’t foresee inventory dipping that low--builders generally find a way to develop more homes--but he said the county is chalking up new home sales faster than any time this decade.

“The market is up pretty dramatically, and it’s on pace to set a record since we began tracking in 1988,” said Bray, national marketing director for the Meyers Group. “The market is driven by quality-of-life issues--low crime, good schools and real nice neighborhoods and environment. Ventura County has all of that and rural and open space too.”

For the second quarter of 1999, from mid-March to mid-June, sales of new homes increased 11.7% over the same period in 1998, according to the Meyers Group’s quarterly report. For the three-month period in 1999, 802 new homes were sold compared to 716 for 1998, also a record-setting year.

As a result of the shrinking supply, the median price of new homes in the county climbed almost 20% from the same time last year. The median price of detached homes rose from $292,990 in the second quarter a year ago to almost $350,000 in 1999, the report said. The median home price climbed 6.1%, about $20,000, between the first and second quarters of 1999.

“It’s a good situation from the builder’s standpoint,” Bray said. “From a buyer’s standpoint, it’s bad because housing is more expensive, but it’s good because they can see the appreciation on their homes.”

The best-selling housing project during the second quarter was the Verandahs, a detached project in Ventura developed by Griffin Industries. The project sold 54 units during the period, ranging in price from $187,490 to $204,490, the Meyers Group reported.

Second on the list was Griffin Industries’ Seabreeze development, which sold 45 units during the three-month period.

The Ventura County Grand Jury earlier this month called the Oxnard project improperly developed, although not illegal, with more than half of the project’s 116 lots smaller than the single-family-home minimum required by the city.

Developers leading the way in sales during the second quarter included Pardee Construction with 157 homes sold and Lennar Homes with 147 units sold over the three-month period.

Whether the Ventura County housing market will maintain its current pace is hard to predict, Bray said, but he added that he wouldn’t be surprised to see housing sales remain healthy.

“I suspect as long as the economy stays strong, and that’s the prediction in Ventura and Los Angeles counties in general, it could be a record year,” he said. “Ventura County has been on an upward trend. It came out of the recession quite strong. The big issue for builders now is finding land to build on.”