Report: Troubles in housing market remain like ‘unwanted house guest’

Carpenters work on a home in the Ridges Las Vegas, a luxury residential community in Summerlin, Thursday, June 11, 2015.

Las Vegas builders sold the fewest homes and pulled the fewest permits in months in October, a new report shows.

And while business this year remains above 2014 levels, one analyst doesn’t expect “any notable improvement” in demand next year.

Buyers picked up 532 new homes in Southern Nevada last month, the lowest monthly total since April. It brought the year’s sales tally to 5,440, up 11.7 percent from the same 10-month period in 2014, according to Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research.

The median sales price of October’s closings was $316,825, up 10.2 percent year over year.

Builders also pulled 556 new-home permits last month, a “disappointing” sum and the lowest monthly tally since January, Home Builders Research founder Dennis Smith wrote. Builders, however, have pulled 6,562 permits this year through October, a “nice” increase of 14.1 percent from the same period in 2014, he wrote.

Smith noted that Las Vegas’ housing market faces a number of roadblocks, including stagnant incomes and high rates of underwater homeowners. These and other issues “seem to be hanging around like an unwanted house guest,” Smith wrote.

As the year winds down, “it is a struggle to envision any notable improvement in housing demand in 2016,” and any expansion of the housing market “will be small, at best,” he wrote.

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