Stabilizing Las Vegas Real Estate Market?
Home prices continues to show some signs of stabilizing thanks to the rush of buyers and out-of state investors. Last year alone home sales for bank owned homes inclined significantly.
If you refer to the graphs, you can see that the percentage of houses being sold has been the highest in the past five years for both condos and single family homes. As a result of the increase in sales, inventory for homes decline over the past year. In fact, the national level of home inventory dropped 22% from a year ago. Las Vegas is selling!
However, don’t expect the inventory to keep on dropping.There’s currently a steady flow of foreclosure that have been keeping the prizes low. Salestraq president predicts a good amount of foreclosures in 2012 “because about 1/4 of our housing stock is still in default.” You know what this means… if there are more homes at default there should be more short sales and REOs in the market.
If Salestraq is right, there might be more investors in the market keeping the prices low for the rest of the year. Cash investors can offer a reliable income and closing time for banks, giving them the advantage of getting a lower bid accepted. Homes being sold below market value due to cash purchases affect the rest of the Las Vegas market by keeping prices low.
Even if you are not an investor and you still have yet to take advantage of the market, there’s still time. Mortgage rates continue to break records and standards have loosen up a bit this new year to try to stimulate the market.
Questions & comments are always welcome!
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-Tracy Castro
sources: Realtor.com, CNNMoney, Salestraq
Graph provided by: Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors