Lack of inventory continues to crimp Las Vegas existing-home sales

Existing home sales in Las Vegas continued to decline with 2,640 escrow closings in February, a 13.5 percent drop from the same month a year ago, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported Thursday.

Lack of inventory is limiting sales, said Dave Tina, president of the association. The number of single-family home listings without a contingent or pending offer has been cut in half from 6,543 a year ago to 3,047 in February.

The median price remained unchanged from January at $150,000, which is a 24 percent increase from a year ago.

“We have buyers all over who are looking for homes here and we have a lack of inventory,” Tina said. “At the same time, that lack of inventory is sending prices up.”

Inventory is likely to stay low throughout this year, even though legislators are expected to amend Assembly Bill 284, the robo-signing law that throttled notice of default filings.

David Brownell of Keller Williams Realty said he’d heard that title and escrow companies had signed off on modified language for the law, and it looks like changes to the statute would be approved during the legislative session.

“Certainly, that will motivate potential short-sellers who have been sitting on the fence, enjoying their many months of extra discretionary income from not making a mortgage or rental payment,” the real estate agent said. “And banks should be able to accelerate the foreclosure process again, which is currently at a near standstill.”

The question remains as to how long it will be before those homes make it to the market.

Tim Kelly Kiernan of ReMax Extreme said he attended a meeting in which several bank officials suggested real estate-owned homes won’t be coming the way some real estate agents think.

“Bank of America is selling off as many as they can before they go to foreclosure so they don’t have to handle the REO process,” he said. “Wonder how many other big banks will do that?”

Kiernan said 13,000 homes are in escrow with contingent offers, and 9,600 of them are short sales, or lender-approved sales for less than the mortgage balance.

Not much has changed in the last month, Brownell said. He disagreed with an industry insider who recently described the Las Vegas housing market as full of distressed assets — real estate-owned homes and short sales.

Nearly 74 percent of current inventory is comprised of traditional equity listings, compared with 41 percent a year ago and 30 percent two years ago. For the second month in a row, traditional equity sales accounted for more than half of total closings.

Real estate-owned homes, or bank-owned homes, made up about 80 percent of all sales four years ago. They slipped to 10.2 percent in February, while short sales were 37.9 percent of all sales.

Cash transactions accounted for nearly 60 percent of February home sales, squeezing out buyers who need financing, Brownell said.

He wrote an offer for a client last week on a single-story home in Summer­lin. As he prepared to submit the offer to the listing agent, he learned that the property had 45 offers, including 29 from cash buyers.

GLVAR statistics are based on data collected through the MLS, which does not necessarily account for newly constructed homes sold by local builders or for sale by owners.

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