Las Vegas Real Estate….Waiting for the bottom….Oops!

The last 5 weeks have shown the first significant bump up in prices in over 6 years. The median selling price of a free-standing home 5 weeks ago was $120,000. The median price now is $128,000. The last time I showed prices this high was February 2011. Inventories of homes for sale are down 40% from just two months ago. As I was running the numbers for the various local planned communities I was shocked by the lack of inventory in some of the most previously active communities. Silverado Ranch closed more homes last month than are on the market there today. Mountain’s Edge, probably the leading community in terms of home sales for some time, also has only around a one month inventory.

When I was doing the planned community updates it was also apparent that in almost every case the median price for homes currently listed for sale was increasing. Factoring in the increase in asking prices with the huge continuing reduction in inventory, I think that I can safely suggest that at least in the short run, prices here will increase.

In 2005, in the small gated section of the community I live in, Sun City Anthem, there were at one point 58 homes for sale out of a total of 226 inside the gate. At that point, for reasons that I really fail to understand, we all thought the party was never going to end for this market. Now in the entire community of over 7,000 homes there are only 93 on the market. Get ready for some higher prices. This will affect sellers probably more than buyers in that sellers are much more likely now to take a “wait and see” position much the same as buyers have taken for the last several years waiting for the bottom. The problem with identifying the bottom is that you can only identify it after the fact and that may well be where we are right now.

Where have all the Las Vegas listings gone?

Where have all the listings gone?

 

 

Foreclosure and short sale listings are way down in the Las Vegas area. The conventional wisdom, to which I happen to agree, is that this is the result of legislation that took affect October last year.

 

Nevada’s state Assembly passed a measure designed to crack down on “robo-signing,” where bank employees signed off on huge numbers of legal filings while falsely claiming to have personally reviewed each case.

 

This issue is a complicated one, but it looks like lenders are reluctant to resume the notice of default process until they can sort out how they can proceed without significant liability

 

Foreclosure Radar shows the trend in notice of defaults. With 4,656 in September 2011 the following months to date, have shown an average of less than 1,000 defaults. Most of these defaults were initiated by other than the mortgage holders, such as homeowners associations. The notices of sale were down 59.16% from February last year .

 

The number of listed short sales and foreclosures has plunged dramatically. Two months ago the number of listed was over 8,889 the number as of April 6 is 3,183.

Las Vegas Real Estate Trends – My Graph

I have for most months since July 2006 figured the median selling price for a free-standing home up to and including this month, February, 2012. It has been quite a slide. I built a graph to show this slide in more physical terms (see below).

The high was a median price of $319,000 in July 2006. As of February 2012 that had fallen off to $120,000. That is better than a 62% decrease.  Per the chart below the steepest drop off was from around June 2007 to June 2009. For the last 12 months the drop off has been just over 8%.

How low will it go? Anyones guess. When prices were going up the sky seemed the limit. That was of course, wrong.  Now it seems that there is no bottom. That is of course wrong also. We may be at it or very close. Inventories of available properties continue to shrink. The number of free-standing homes available right now is 7,135. That figure was over 8,800 two months ago and was over 13,000 in May 2009.

Las Vegas – How safe is it to live here?

This question or questions as to the crime rates and relative saftey of specific areas in the valley are almost always asked by my clients. There is a short answer to the question as to areas. Rule of thumb, the farther you are away from the center of the city the safer you will be. However, even in the central areas there are “islands” of relative safety. I’m going to stop using the work relative, so just assume it whenever I use the work safe. The guard gated Las Vegas Country Club would be one example of a safe centrally located community. Above is a map created with tools from Padmapper.com. The crime overlays used are only for the areas of the valley serviced my Metro, not North Las Vegas or Henderson. As such it gives somewhat of a deceptive picture, but I do think that it is helpful in illustrating the rule of thumb mentioned above. The yellow areas represent the highest crime areas with the green areas showing areas with less crime and the areas with no overlays, areas with the least crime. Those areas in the far west, around Summerlin, the areas to the south, south of the airport and even the areas east, around and above Hollywood Blvd and the northwest show as good with respect to crime. These areas are all serviced by Metro.

Henderson in 2011 was rated by Forbes Magazine the 3rd safest mid-size city the country. This, along with good news for Henderson, illustrates the fact that there are areas inside the valley that are very safe.

The local area police departments have tools online to evaluate any given area, address or zip code as to safety. I have used all three sites and they are great. Here is a link back to the page on my web site with additional crime information as well as links to the above mentioned police departments crime search tools.

Crime search tools.

 

All zip codes are not created equal

Welcome to my new post! It is a cold day in December ( at least by Las Vegas standards). Good time to stay warm inside and do some publishing! Below is some information as well as a graph that shows how the foreclosures over the last four years have been distributed throughout the valley.

The last four years have resulted in over 100,000 foreclosures. By most estimates there will be another 100,000 over the next four years. That will result in 36% of all privately held homes in this area lost to foreclosure over that 8 year period. How the foreclosures have been distributed is another matter.  Below is a graph showing all the local zip codes. In each zip code you will see two numbers. The first is the percentage. The second is the number of actual homes lost to foreclosure. The zip code with the highest foreclosure rate is 89086 at 33%. The zip code with the lowest foreclosure rate in 89134.  89134 is predominately Sun City Summerlin where most of the residents are retired and many paid cash for their homes

This graph is courtesy of SalesTraq.

Exploring “Old” Summerlin

Whenever I am in the northern part of Summerlin I am always impressed with the ambience of the area, particularly opposed to some of the newer planned communities and even the newer areas of Summerlin. The homes here are a little older than some are comfortable with, but the planned combination of homes, common areas, retail and commercial areas is, in my opinion, unsurpassed in the Las Vegas Valley.

Homes  range from smaller condos to large customs. At the time of this writing, prices range from $40,000 to just under $2,000,000.  The older villages include The Pueblo Village, The Hills Village and The Trails Village.  Homes range in age from 15 years old to around 23 years old.  Due to the rather strict CC&R’s in Summerlin, all of the neighborhoods look amazingly good.

The below photos was taken along Hills Center Dr. This tree-lined street is one of the most beautiful in the valley, in my opinion.

Below is a photo of the mid morning coffee crowd at Starbucks in the Trails Village Center.

Pueblo Park in The Pueblo Village is regarded by some as the best “desert” park in the Las Vegas area.

The areas described are just south of Lake Mead Blvd. on both sides of Rampart avenue.  Access to the rest of the valley is good, usually by the way of Summerlin Parkway, just a short distance to the south.  If you are considering a move to this area I would recommend that you at least give ”old” Summerlin a look.

 

Las Vegas – Best or worst place to live/retire?

Top five on Forbes list for worst places to live/retire?

Yep, that’s true, according to Forbes. The primary reason they use is that there has been such a dramatic drop in home values. Phoenix, our neighbor, is on the same list and even ranked worse!  I am usually interested in the Forbes top this or that, but I find the latest publication poorly researched and silly at best.  Question, do you think that the Las Vegas area was a better place to live when the median price for a free-standing home was $319,000 or now when the median price is $122,000?

The graph below represents the median home prices in several areas of the west. Also included is the housing cost/income ratio, showing the amount spent on housing as a percentage of the average income for the various areas. Note that this graph represents the median price for all homes, condos, townhomes and well as free-standing homes.

This area still offers the same advantages that have attracted so many new residents over the last several years. Lots of sunshine, no cold winters, no state income tax, no state inheritance tax and plenty to do, including proximity to several national parks are examples. The primary difference is that now you can live here for a fraction of what it would have cost you just a few years ago.