Home Sales for March Up 80% in Some Areas : Real estate: The pace still trails last year’s. Brokers say the rebound heralds an end to the market downturn.

Ventura County’s housing market has staged a dramatic comeback in recent weeks, with real estate groups in some areas of the county reporting sales increases of as much as 80% in March over February.

While the county’s overall economy is still in the doldrums, brokers say reduced housing prices and low mortgage rates appear to have finally stabilized the real estate market.

“The worst is very much over,” said Clarence Bales, manager of Century 21 Central Coast Realty in Camarillo. “I would say business turned around five or six weeks ago.

“Suddenly, we’re seeing multiple offers on a few properties--something that hasn’t happened in two years. The brokers in my office have even sold a couple of homes the first weekends they were listed.”

Bales declined to give figures, but said that in March his office more than doubled its recent sales pace of 25 to 30 residences monthly.

Realtors throughout Ventura County confirm Bales’ report, but also say current activity in no way approaches the red-hot pace of two years ago and has only recently begun to approach the level of early 1990.

Still, members of the county’s largest real estate board, the Conejo Valley Assn. of Realtors, sold 80% more homes in March than in February, although the March sales were 17% below the level of March, 1990.

The board, which serves Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park and nearby areas of Los Angeles County, reported 198 sales of existing homes--147 single-family houses and 51 condominiums--during March, 1991.

The upswing has been strongest at the low and high ends of the market, said Fred Priebe, president of the Conejo Valley group and executive vice president of Brown Realtors.

“At the low end, which in our area ranges from $200,000 to $375,000, people are attracted by prices that are still soft and by low interest rates,” Priebe said. “Several lenders are offering fixed-rate mortgages at rates of 9.5%. That’s about the best we’ve seen in five years.”

At the other end of the market, Priebe reported increased sales at $1 million or more. Most of these homes, he said, are over the Los Angeles County line, in and near Westlake Village.

“In that price range, people seem to be insulated from the problems of the economy,” Priebe said. “Those buyers are becoming aware that there’s a very good supply of the properties they’re interested in, and they’re finding that they can still drive a good bargain.”

The county’s second-largest real estate board, the Simi Valley-Moorpark Assn. of Realtors, said the March home sales of its members totaled 118, up 66% from February’s 71 but 22% below the 152 of a year earlier.

On the west side of the county, members of the Ventura Board of Realtors sold 75 homes in March--38% more than the 54 in February and 5.6% more than the March total of 71.

The median price of single-family houses sold in the city of Ventura in March was $210,500--up 4.8% from $200,750 in February, but down 10.5% from $235,000 in March, 1990.

Dale King, Multiple Listing Service chairman of the Ventura board, said most sales in and near Ventura have been at $200,000 and below.

“That’s a good sign that an upturn is under way,” he said. “A recovery usually starts at the lower end of the market and works its way through.”

Once people are able to sell lower-priced houses, he said, they can then buy more expensive homes, and the process is repeated throughout the market.

“Condos have picked up,” Janey Messmore, president of the Ventura group, said. “Once they start moving, everything else follows.”

One recent purchaser of a condominium in Camarillo agreed with the view that the time has finally arrived to take action in Ventura County’s housing market.

LaJean Wenzel said she delayed buying a condo after moving to the county from Minnesota a year ago, watching both prices and interest rates decline. In early February, Wenzel, a computer software engineer at Unisys Corp., decided to buy.

“I didn’t look very long,” she said. “I knew I wanted a two-bedroom condo, and I knew I wanted to stay in Camarillo, where I’d been renting, so I could be near work.

“After seeing only eight or nine places, I found one I liked and made an offer. It wasn’t a low-ball offer, either. I could feel that the market was changing.”

Wenzel said she and the condo’s owner bargained “just a little” before making a deal. For $180,000, Wenzel purchased a two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse on Calle Lozano, part of the Mission Verde complex in Camarillo’s Mission Oaks section.

While brokers throughout the county generally agree that there is little chance for an immediate return to the pace of 1988 and 1989, some expect prices to firm as the existing supply of unsold houses is depleted.

“Sellers who can’t hang around are still offering some very good deals, but I think prices will go up,” Messmore said. “It’s the law of supply and demand.”

Messmore said it now takes 60 to 90 days on average to sell a house in Ventura. This is down from 90 to 120 days as recently as two months ago, she said.

In addition to economic reasons, Messmore is convinced that the quick victory of the U.S. and its allies in the Persian Gulf War has been a prime factor in the real estate turnaround. “That gave everything a boost,” she said.

Whatever the cause, more and more brokers are smiling.

Tim Hoctor, head of T.E. Hoctor & Co. in Ventura, tells of selling a hillside home that had been on the market 18 months, forcing the couple that owned it to be separated for that long.

“The wife stayed here to watch the house while the husband moved to Orange County to take a new job,” Hoctor said. Their two-bedroom, one-bath house, which Hoctor described as “small but real nice, with a good view,” finally sold two weeks ago for $260,000. The original asking price a year and a half ago was $375,000.

In contrast, Hoctor said he has just sold a three-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath “cream puff” near Ventura College in the first week of its listing. The house was gobbled up at its asking price of $290,000.

“I expect a real strong summer,” Hoctor said.

Builders of new houses, too, are reporting vastly improved sales.

Paul Starke, president of Standard Pacific of Ventura, said his company has sold all remaining homes at both its Lynnmere tract in Thousand Oaks and at Summerfield in Oxnard.

“At both tracts, our traffic and sales in the first quarter were at least 100% better than in the same period last year,” Starke said.

He said the 14 homes sold in February and March at Lynnmere, where prices were in the $500,000 range, completed that development. At Summerfield, Standard Pacific is now building 15 additional houses to cost from $270,000 to $360,000. And the company plans to build another 16 before the end of the year.

“I don’t see any great price hikes ahead, but we’ve cut down on our offers of upgrades as sales incentives,” Starke added.

In fact, Starke is so bullish about Ventura County real estate that he has joined several other builders in proposing a development that will include hundreds of new homes on 500 to 600 acres in northeast Oxnard. Construction would probably start in 1993. Starke also plans to start a new townhouse development in Oxnard next year.

Mortgage lenders, too, are optimistic.

“We’re operating at capacity and are about to hire another loan processor,” said Paul V. Mistele, vice president of loan administration at Bank of A. Levy.

Mistele said the bank closed 46 mortgage loans in March, more than quadrupling the volume of last December.

“We’re still doing a lot of refinancing for homeowners who want to take advantage of the current low interest rates,” he said, “but we’re also handling more sales transactions than we’ve seen in a long time.”