Year End Las Vegas Real Estate Wrap Up
The best way, in my opinion, to characterize the 2016 Las Vegas real estate market would be as uneventful Free-standing median home sales prices increased only 1.3% from December 2015 to December 2016. The median sales price for December 2016 was $235,000. For me, how flat this market has been is the surprise. If I took a 3 months rolling average comparing sales prices for the last 3 months of 2015 with 2016, the increase would be slightly better, but not much.
New home sales increased somewhat to around 6,000 for the year and based on building permits pulled next year should be slightly better. Keep in mind that at the height of this market, around 2003 and 2004, there were over 30,000 new home yearly closings.
Distressed home sales are down slightly making up 11.7% of December 2016 closings. That compares to a 14% figure for December 2015. Short sales and foreclosures are still a factor in this market but are becoming harder to find and much closer to the prices of conventionally sold homes . Given that around 25% of Las Vegas area homeowners are still “underwater”, owing more that the present value of their home, I expect both foreclosures and short sales to still be significant in this marketplace from some time to come.
That is it for the forecasting. The problem with predicting the local real estate market is the same as predicting any other local market. I can look at the local conditions and be tempted, but when you factor in the country and also the world, given that this is an increasingly global economy, it is way, way beyond my pay grade to venture a guess
Ultimately the “breaking news” real estate wise at the end of 2016 is that there is no “breaking news”. After the wild ride of the last decade a stable, boring market sounds pretty good
