Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Signs of a Real Estate Recovery in Las Vegas

Las Vegas Review-Journal -- "Home prices rose for the third straight month in April and the inventory of listings shrank to a five-week supply, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported Monday. The median price for 3,185 single-family houses sold in April was $127,900, up 4 percent from the previous month and up 2.3 percent from April 2011.

It is the first time prices have increased on a year-over-year basis since August 2010, said Kolleen Kelley, president of the Realtors association. "Of course, this has a lot to do with our shrinking housing inventory," she said. "Based on current demand, our housing supply is down to about four to six weeks." Total inventory of homes on the Multiple Listing Service decreased 20.3 percent from a year ago to 17,884 in April, while only 4,162 units are available without pending or contingent offers, down 63.4 percent from a year ago.

Housing inventory already was tightening throughout 2011, and it began to contract more rapidly when Assembly Bill 284 - known as the robo-signing law - took effect in October. It requires lenders to prove they have all the necessary documents in place before proceeding with a foreclosure. Notices of default, which begin the foreclosure process, have plummeted from about 3,000 a month to a few hundred, and the number of bank-owned homes on the market has dwindled to about 800.

Even with fewer houses to sell, existing home sales remain ahead of the record pace set in 2011, when Realtors sold 48,186 houses in Southern Nevada. April sales were up 3.3 percent from the same month a year ago."

HT: Gary Lyle

6 Comments:

At 5/08/2012 6:01 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Somebody needs to be warned of this before people start going bonkers in July and August ...

Both Ford and Chrysler, so far, have announced they will suspend some of the usual early July shutdowns for model-year changes due to increased demand and need to crank out more cars. This happened last year and 2010 also.

What this means is ... initial jobless claims will take a dive in early July ... and then spike up in late July as a counter-reaction in the seasonal adjustments.

Since this will be the 3rd year in a row of this, hopefully the Labor Dept's seasonal adjustments will have incorporated this new phenomenon into their algorithm, but I suspect that will only be partially the case.

Ford joins Chrysler, cuts summer shutdown due to sales

Since two weeks includes the week of the 12th - which is the BLS survey week - this also means July's jobs number will probably be better than expected, but then August's will be worse than expected.

 
At 5/09/2012 8:06 AM, Blogger Luther for Liberty said...

This article would be more accurately titled, "Signs of re-inflating real estate bubble in Las Vegas".

 
At 5/09/2012 8:14 AM, Blogger Jon Murphy said...

When I was out in Vegas in February, I was surprised how many "Sale pending" and "sold" signs there were out there.

 
At 5/09/2012 10:09 AM, Blogger bart said...

Still down almost 55% from the peak, still down trending.


http://www.nowandfutures.com/images/case_shiller_las_vegas.png

 
At 5/09/2012 10:51 AM, Blogger Jon Murphy said...

Still down almost 55% from the peak, still down trending.

Well, actually, it is not still trending downward. The data trend has actually flattened. It's hard to see from the chart, but it has. Furthermore, the median price over the past quarter is 0.2% above the same three months last year, suggesting prices will rise further in the short run. So, we are seeing signs of a recovery. The question then becomes "how sustainable will the recovery be?"

 
At 5/14/2012 6:45 PM, Blogger james said...

If I were going to buy a home las vagas would certainly be about the best spot that I could think off.

 

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