Las Vegas home sales soar

By Las Vegas Sun Staff (contact)

Friday, May 8, 2009 | 9:58 a.m.

Driven by a whopping 40 percent reduction in prices, home sales soared in April in the Las Vegas area, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported today.

The Realtors said single-family home sales in April totaled 3,198 -- up 7.3 percent from 2,980 in March and up 78.3 percent from 1,794 sales in April 2008.

Condominium and townhome sales totaled 727. That’s up 20.4 percent from 604 such sales in March and up 242.9 percent from 212 one year ago.

The median price of a single-family home sold in the Las Vegas area decreased by 4.9 percent during the month, from $149,000 in March to $141,720 in April. This current median price is down 39.9 percent compared to $235,875 in April 2008.

"This is becoming a familiar refrain as we continue to track trends in the local housing market," GLVAR President Sue Naumann said in a statement. "With home prices dropping, more people are seeing this as a great time to buy a home here in Southern Nevada. As a result, our inventory of homes listed for sale is generally stable or declining, as it did in April."

Whether this news is good or not depends on your point of view, she added.

"Sellers obviously don’t want to see prices keep falling," Naumann said. "But buyers are taking advantage of historic bargains, with mortgage interest rates at an all-time low, and home prices now more affordable than they’ve been in a generation."

Naumann added that bank-owned (or so-called REO) properties are still dominating the market and driving down prices, accounting for about 80 percent of all existing home sales in Southern Nevada. She said this prompted GLVAR to create an REO work group to deal with this issue.

"Part of the solution to the problems that come with buying a foreclosed property is education – both for the public and for the members of GLVAR," she said. "We want to educate the public about what can be expected in an REO real estate transaction. Our top REO agents are helping us put together a brochure and other materials about the issues they face on a daily basis."

The association distributes such statistics each month based on data collected through its Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which does not necessarily account for new homes sold by local builders or for sale by owners.