Focus on North Vandenberg Village

You ever have one of those weeks that just blasted by you like a freight train, and by the time you know it, it's Friday afternoon? This has been one of those weeks for me...

Most of you probably don't get the distinction between North and South Vandenberg Village. For our MLS purposes, it divides along Highway 1. There are some differences in the types of properties that you find in these two areas. Most of South Village - up until the new construction started in Providence Landing a few years ago - was built around 1960. North Village was built more in phases. There are a core of homes there that are similar in age and style to South Village, but there are also neighborhoods that were built in the 70's, 80's, and even a few from the 90's. It's a bit more of a grab bag.

North Village has probably held its value better than most areas in our MLS. As you can see from the price chart I posted last week, we've dropped around half of our value from the peak prices in late 2005/early 2006 in the market as a whole. There isn't really sufficient data to come up with a price per square foot chart for individual neighborhoods, but it appears that most of the North Village houses are down more like 35-40% from the peak when we look at similar properties.

Like most areas, we have less on the market in North Village than we've had over the past couple of years. We only have 9 active listings up there today, and 5 of those are in some form of contingent status. There's only one pending listing, and we've had 5 sales up there in the past three months.

North Village wasn't hit quite as hard last year by the foreclosure wave as the rest of our market. Only 32% of the sold units up there were REO's, and there were no closed short sales in 2008. However, 6 of the 9 active and contingent listings there right now are short sales, and one of the contingent listings is an REO.

Come back Monday to see the big picture numbers, and later next week, I'll do South Village to compare how things have gone there.