I live in a town adjacent to Thousand Oaks; I’ve been closely watching the market since February. Make no mistake, the sold prices are dropping. Pick a property, any property in T.O. on Zillow and look at the comps. They can be arranged in “date sold” order and one can plainly see the dropping prices, especially those in August and September. As you wrote PS, VC is lagging SD. Countrywide is probably the second largest employer in this whole area, behind Amgen. Is there a reason to think this area is different than SD? Not that I have been able to determine. In fact, we may be the region MOST similar to SD.
On the other hand, your neighbor will have strong negotiating power because many sellers are desperate. She should definitiely make VERY lowball offers. There are quite a few properties with NODs, if one compares Zip and Foreclosure.com.
