Home sales at 2 Las Vegas communities in top 15 nationwide

Houses in Summerlin line the hillside on the west end of Lake Mead Boulevard in this February 2000 file photo.

Two master-planned communities in Las Vegas were among the top 15 nationally for home sales last year, a new report shows.

Builders sold 602 new homes in Summerlin in 2015, sixth best in the country, and 452 new homes in Providence, 13th best, according to real estate consulting firm RCLCO.

Summerlin’s tally was up 38 percent from 2014, when it ranked 15th in the nation. Providence’s sales total slipped 7 percent from 2014, when it ranked No. 10, RCLCO reported.

Summerlin is being developed by Dallas-based Howard Hughes Corp. and is by far the largest planned community in the Las Vegas Valley at 22,500 acres. It runs along the western edge of the valley and has more than 100,000 residents, or about 5 percent of Clark County’s population.

The community, planned for more than 200,000 residents, is projected to be completed in 2039, the developers say.

Providence, covering 1,200 acres in the upper northwest valley, is being developed by Las Vegas-based Focus Property Group. Plans call for 7,500 homes.

Overall in Southern Nevada, buyers picked up more new homes last year than in 2014 and are paying prices not seen since the recession.

Builders sold 6,104 homes last year through November, up 13 percent from the same 11-month period in 2014. The median price of November’s closings was $321,405, up 9 percent year-over-year and the highest locally since August 2007, according to Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research.

Still, the market is by no means roaring, let alone fully healed from last decade’s housing bust.

Las Vegas, for instance, has the highest rate of underwater borrowers among large U.S. cities, at 22 percent, according to Zillow. Wages also are largely flat for many people, crimping their ability to buy homes.

Builders’ sales totals remain a fraction of what they reached during the hyper-inflated boom years last decade. In 2005 alone, nearly 39,000 new homes were sold in Southern Nevada.

People who “still like to speak about the housing production reaching the levels prior to the recession, especially in Las Vegas, in the next three to five years are in for a rude awakening,” Home Builders Research founder Dennis Smith wrote last month.

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