Best Buys In Ojai/Team Deckert – Our daily blog spotlighting the best in Ojai Valley real estate!

June 9, 2023

Quote of the Day

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.

– Milan Kundera

This Day in History

June 9, 1964: CIA report challenges “domino theory.” In reply to a formal question submitted by President Lyndon B. Johnson – “Would the rest of Southeast Asia necessarily fall if Laos and South Vietnam came under North Vietnamese control?” – the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) submits a memo that effectively challenges the “domino theory” backbone of the Johnson administration policies. This theory contended that if South Vietnam fell to the communists, the rest of Southeast Asia would also fall “like dominoes,” and the theory had been used to justify much of the Vietnam War effort.

The CIA concluded that Cambodia was probably the only nation in the area that would immediately fall. “Furthermore,” the report said, “a continuation of the spread of communism in the area would not be inexorable, and any spread which did occur would take time – time in which the total situation might change in any number of ways unfavorable to the communist cause.” The CIA report concluded that if South Vietnam and Laos also fell, it “would be profoundly damaging to the U.S. position in the Far East,” but Pacific bases and allies such as the Philippines and Japan would still wield enough power to deter China and North Vietnam from any further aggression or expansion. President Johnson appears to have ignored the CIA analysis – he eventually committed over 500,000 American troops to the war in an effort to block the spread of communism to South Vietnam.

Ojai Weather

Mostly cloudy – High 70 / Low 57

Total rainfall for the season – 47.15 inches

Lake Casitas water capacity – 73.9%

Friday, June 9, 2023

9:55 a.m.

There are seven new listings on the market:

1117 Golden West Avenue – $1,250,000

4220 Grand Avenue – $1,950,000

1205 Country Club Drive – $3,499,000

412 Franklin Street – $979,000

925 N. Signal Street – $6,500,000

156 Willey Street – $899,000

130 N. Padre Juan Avenue – $825,000

(This property is currently on “hold” – so there is no MLS link available. It’s a 3 bed/2 bath, 1,357 sq. ft. home on .17 acres)

Prior “coming soon” listings, now on the market:

10802 Oak Knoll Road – $1,299,000

Have yourselves a great weekend; I’ll update the Things to Do list when it becomes available. (Edit: The list has been updated.)

Pic of the Day

You think this is art? No, it just won’t do…

Rage, rage against the placement of the lights

Thursday, June 8, 2023

9:50 a.m.

There is a new listing on the market:

66 Taormina Lane – $1,495,000

Pic of the Day

♫ We all came out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline… ♫

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

11:40 a.m.

There is a new listing on the market:

12117 Chumash Road – $1,595,000

I was unable to get to the monthly Ojai Market Update yesterday, so here it is today. These are statistics for current Ojai valley listings, as well as sales that occurred in May, 2023:

~ 37 new listings came to the market in May, compared to 34 in April.

~ 21 residential properties sold in May, compared to 18 in April (does not include land parcels, commercial properties, or mobile homes).

~ Of the 21 properties that sold in May, 5 sold above list price, 3 sold at list price, and the remaining properties sold below list price. For comparison, in April, 4 of the 18 listings sold over full price, 4 sold at list price, and the remaining below list price. The average number of days on the market for properties sold May in was 41 days (53 days in April). (Note: For purposes of these statistics, “list price” is the original list price of the home and does not take into account any subsequent price reductions or increases after the home was initially listed on the market.)

~ The average sales price for homes in May was $1,168,176 while the median sales price was $1,085,000. (These numbers for April were $1,189,549 and $1,208,500 respectively.) The lowest sales price for a home in May was $711,000 while the highest sales price was $2,495,000.

~ As of today there are 38 single-family residential homes available on the market – one of which is “coming soon” (does not include land, commercial property or mobile homes). For comparison, there were 37 active listings on the market on May 4th (the date of our last market update). Of the 38 active listings on the market at this time, 6 of them are listed under $1,000,000 (there were 4 such listings on May 4th). If I remove the outlier listing in upper Ojai that’s listed at $65,000,000, the average list price for homes on the market today is $3,941,973 ($3,352,972 in May), while the median listed home price is $1,995,000 ($1,847,000 in May). There are currently five listings in the Ojai valley that are over $10,000,000 (in addition to the $65,000,000 property mentioned above) – so those are skewing the average list price somewhat.

~ During the month of May there were 19 price reductions on listings (11 in April). Note: For this metric, price reductions include ALL types of listings (residential, land, mobile home, commercial) so that you have an overall view of what the entire market is doing.

~ The 37 new listings that came to the market in May represented the highest number of new listings in one month since June of 2022 – when 46 new listings came to market. Additionally, the 21 sold listings in May represented the highest number of sold properties in one month since August of 2022.