Ventura County home sales, prices both crept up last month

The median price of a single-family home sold in Ventura County last month jumped more than 10%, and sales volume was also up after more than two years of decline, according to the latest data on California’s real estate market.

Ventura County’s real estate market since 2020 has been characterized by two related trends: a lack of homes for sale and a high price for those that are sold. In February, the trend of rising prices continued while the trend of few homes on the market reversed itself a bit.

The median price is the point at which half of the homes sold for more and half for less. In February, the median price of a home sold in Ventura County was $890,000, up 10.6% from a year earlier, according to data released this week by the California Association of Realtors.

That’s not the highest price ever for the county — the median was more than $900,000 from May through November of last year, peaking at $962,500 in September — but it’s the highest ever for the month of February. The real estate market tends to be seasonal, with prices and sales volume lowest in the winter.

The number of sales in February was up 14.2% from a year earlier, after showing 15.8% year-to-year growth the month before. That’s a major reversal. Before January, sales volume had dropped almost every month since the summer of 2021, sometimes by as much as 50% from the prior year.

There were many factors that combined to make home sales scarce in 2022 and 2023, with the rise in mortgage interest rates near the top of the list.

“We are really, in many ways, climbing out from the bottom in terms of home sales,” said Selma Hepp, chief economist for the real estate information firm CoreLogic. “Last year, we were at the lowest levels we’ve seen going back to 2007.”

The thing holding back sales in California, she said, has been lack of inventory, not lack of demand. In other words, there haven’t been many homes on the market, but the ones that do go up for sale are still selling quickly.