Focus On South Side Lompoc

Let's take a swing through the Southside and see what our market activity has been looking like recently. For a definition of the area and a description of the homes I'm covering here, you can go back to my April post on the area.

Activity has been pretty good in the area in recent months, and on some small numbers, it looks like we might be seeing a bit less REO & short sale activity here lately. We have 7 active listings here at the moment (2 REO/1 short sale/4 traditional). There are only two contingent listings here, one each REO and short sale. The pending numbers are similar, with 9 pending sales in the area (4 REO/2 SS/3 traditional). Both of those sets of numbers would point to a slight decline in the distressed listings in the area, but again, we're looking at very small sample sizes.

The sold numbers look very much like the larger market in terms of percentages. We've had 10 sold units in the area over the past three months (6 REO/1 SS/3 traditional). No big surprises here, but based on the active and pending sales, it looks like at the moment, we're seeing a bit of a decline in market share for distressed properties. That could change a lot in the course of a couple of months, however.

Values appear to be improving in the area. I pulled out the 1960's tract homes from this area that sold over the past three months, and compared them to similar homes in the area from the three months previous to that, and it looks like the prices have trended up quite a bit, by about 10%. Again, keep in mind that we're working with a very small set of data here, about 6 houses for each period, so there can be a lot of variation. I don't think that we have enough data to say that we've seen 10% appreciation in a quarter, but I do think that there is some indication that we might be on the front end of a recovery in the area.

Next week I'll move this analysis north a little bit and take a look at the activity in Central Lompoc.