Las Vegas’ home price growth continues to slow

Southern Nevada prices were up 2.9 percent year-over-year in September, below the national rate of 3.2 percent, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index released Tuesday by S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Las Vegas’ growth rate was 12th among the 20 markets in the report, while Phoenix topped the list with a 6 percent price jump.

In the Case-Shiller report released last month, Southern Nevada home prices were up 3.3 percent from a year earlier, putting the region eighth among the markets tracked – a sharp drop after two years in the No. 1 or No. 2 slots on the Case-Shiller list.

Las Vegas’ housing market has cooled off this year after its heated run sparked affordability concerns. Buyer activity has picked up recently, but overall, prices aren’t climbing nearly as fast as they did last year, builders are closing fewer sales, and the once-shrunken tally of available listings on the resale market has shot back up.

Nationally, prices have so steadily outpaced wage growth for several years that the market is now constrained by buyers’ capacity to pay.

Realtor.com senior economist George Ratiu said lower financing costs and a rising number of new homes are “welcome signs in a market parched for inventory,” but “prices are still climbing and the number of existing houses in the affordable price range is down by double-digits.”

Across the U.S., the housing slowdown that has “characterized much of 2019 is really much more of a stabilization than any kind of prolonged or damaging housing slump,” Zillow economist Matthew Speakman said in a statement Tuesday.

He added that “after years of favoring sellers, market conditions are gradually becoming much more balanced,” which “should encourage more buyers to enter the market.”

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter. The Associated Press contributed to this report.