Editorial: Bargain hunters in Ventura County
Just about everybody likes getting attention.
But in the case of Ventura County, it is aging baby boomers looking for second homes on the cheap who are checking out the area.
That’s the conclusion of a recent online story at Forbes com, which looked at data from online real estate searches compiled by Trulia.com.
Several Florida cities were tops for out-of-staters looking for property, but California placed two metro areas near the top of the list: Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario and Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura. Forbes thinks most of the searches are being conducted by potential retirees who looked at the area when prices were at their peak and are now back, this time bargain-hunting.
That’s a welcome sign for stability in hard-hit places such as Oxnard. But it also means that Ventura may be more desirable as a retirement center than as a business hub. Which in turn means more demand for services and less potential for job growth in manufacturing and the industrial sector.
