Home prices rise again, and so do short sales

The Las Vegas housing market continues to shift from foreclosures to short sales, and the median home price rose for the seventh straight month, local Realtors said Monday.

The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported 3,076 single-family home sales in August, a 17 percent decrease from the same month a year ago.

The median price was $138,000, up 3.8 percent from July and up 15 percent from a year ago. It's the first double-digit increase for year-over-year prices since December 2005.

Inventory of single-family homes available for sale without a pending or contingent office dwindled to 3,981 units, compared with more than 11,000 a year ago.

"We're really struggling with inventory," said Robyn Yates of Windermere Prestige Properties in Henderson. "That's the challenge. Even though it's great that prices are going up, it's not great from the perspective of real estate firms and buyers. It's very frustrating."

David Brownell of Keller Williams Realty reported 586 real estate-owned, or bank-owned, home sales in August, down 75 percent from a year ago. Short sales, or homes sold for less than the mortgage owed, jumped 56 percent to 1,579 in August.

Short sales now account for 44 percent of the market, compared with 22 percent a year ago. Foreclosures have dropped from 51 percent of the market to 16.3 percent, Brownell noted.

Some real estate agents blame Nevada's robo-signing law for constricting REO inventory, but the national banking settlement accomplished the same thing, GLVAR president Kolleen Kelley said.

"We're holding our own. We're getting listings," she said. "We thought we'd completely run out of inventory at this point. That hasn't happened and doesn't look like it will."

The market is being held up by more short-sale listings and equity sellers, Kelley said.

"You have investors who came in when the market went crazy in California. Some of them used their homes as ATMs, but not all of them did," she said.

Even as inventory shrinks, the months' supply has started to increase after bottoming in June, said Frank Nason, president of Residential Resources in Las Vegas.

About 85 percent of homes under contract are short sales waiting for lender approval.

It's evident that the decline in REO sales and increase in short sales is affecting the market in terms of successful closings, Brownell said. Average time from listing to closing has increased to 110 days.

That's in contrast to National Association of Realtors' statistics that show median days on market down 29.6 percent from 98 days a year ago to 69 days in July.

While days on market are pulled from statistics maintained by local multiple listing services, the task is complicated because sellers sometimes take their homes off the market and relist them.

Las Vegas Realtors reported that 53.4 percent of homes sold within 30 days of being on the market, and 13.1 percent sold within 31-60 days.

Yates said buyers from outside Las Vegas don't always believe what local agents are telling them.

"You have to let the market teach the buyers a lesson," she said.

"The perception is Las Vegas is on sale, prices are really good and it's easy to get a house. They're shocked that prices are going up and you have to compete to get a house."

Realtors sold 612 condo and townhomes in August at a median price of $65,000, down 2.3 percent from July, but up 16.1 percent from a year ago.

Contact reporter Hubble Smith at hsmith@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0491.