Median price of Las Vegas home rises 8.1 percent, report says

Las Vegas’ outer edges may have the most home construction and the highest prices. But if you’re looking for the fastest-rising values, look closer to the core.

The biggest jumps in median resale prices last year tended to be in older, more centrally located areas of the valley, according to a new report from Applied Analysis’ residential research arm, SalesTraq.

West of downtown around Washington Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard, the 89106 ZIP code posted the fastest price growth, climbing 22.8 percent from 2015. That was followed by ZIP code 89146, around Sahara Avenue and Jones Boulevard, at 17.5 percent, and 89030, around Cheyenne Avenue and Interstate 15, at 16.3 percent.

Across the valley, the median sales price of previously owned homes rose 8.1 percent last year, SalesTraq reported. All but three ZIP codes posted increases. Two of those ZIP codes are in the central valley. The third is in the far north.

Despite older areas’ growth rates, the highest prices are in the outer suburbs, mostly in and around such master-planned communities as Summerlin, which runs along the valley’s western rim, and Anthem, in southern Henderson. Moreover, areas with the fastest-climbing prices also have above-average rates of empty — and possibly abandoned or bank-owned — homes.

But in a city where old real estate can get dismissed as dated, if not imploded, the findings show there’s still plenty of action in Las Vegas’ older neighborhoods.

Applied Analysis principal Brian Gordon said buyers are “gravitating toward more affordable” homes amid the valley’s rising prices, and that older, more centrally located areas tend to have cheaper options. Buyers there could include first-time homeowners or those who went through a foreclosure, bankruptcy or short sale after the market crashed and couldn’t get a mortgage for years.

In 89106, for instance, his group counted 509 resale transactions last year.

The median sales price of previously owned single-family homes — the bulk of the market — has more than doubled since hitting bottom in early 2012, reaching $238,000 last month. But it remains well below the peak of $315,000 in mid-2006, during the housing bubble, according to Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors data.

Areas now with the fastest growth rates have lagged others in recovering from the crash, according to Gordon, as their prices are further from the peaks than, say, suburban areas, which “have managed to close that gap quicker.”

The highest median sales price last year, $365,000, was in the 89138 ZIP code, west of the 215 Beltway around Alta Drive in Summerlin. The valley overall had a median resale price of $199,900 for all types of homes, above every ZIP code that ranked in the top 10 for growth, SalesTraq found.

Among those 10, all but one had above-average rates of vacant homes last year, according to housing tracker Attom Data Solutions, leaving them vulnerable to squatters, vandals and other possible problems.

The top-ranked area for price growth was near the top for empty properties, as well.

Some 6.2 percent of homes in 89106 were vacant as of the third quarter, second-highest among ZIP codes in the Las Vegas Valley and nearly triple Southern Nevada’s rate of 2.1 percent, Attom found.

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