Las Vegas home buyers opting for condos and townhomes

Homebuilders’ best-selling product in Las Vegas — the single-family house — continues to lose ground to less-expensive condos and townhomes.

Builders closed 769 sales of single-family homes in Southern Nevada last month, down 6.6 percent from May of 2018, and closed 138 sales of attached homes, up 5.3 percent, according to a new report from Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research.

Buyers paid a median price of $399,636 for single-family homes last month, compared to $294,039 for condos and townhouses.

Overall, builders closed 3,498 sales of single-family houses this year through May, down 7.1 percent from the same five-month stretch last year, and 577 sales of attached homes, up 27 percent, Home Builders Research reported.

Meanwhile, the resale market, which dominates Las Vegas’ housing sector, has seen signs of a cool-down lately.

House prices aren’t climbing nearly as fast as they were a year ago, and the once-depleted tally of available listings has shot back up, following a stretch of fast-rising prices and rising mortgage rates that, collectively, sparked affordability concerns.

In recent months, prices have been flat. The median sales price of previously owned single-family homes — the bulk of the market — was $300,000 in May, unchanged from both April and March, according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

Compared to a year earlier, the median house price was up 1.7 percent last month, the smallest year-over-year gain in seven years, the association reported.

Also, a total of 7,855 houses were on the market without offers at the end of May, up 90.7 percent from May of 2018, acording to the GLVAR.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.