New-home sales up a little, prices down a little

A view of new home construction in Summerlin Wednesday, July 30, 2014.

Las Vegas homebuilders started the year with a bump in sales and a dip in prices compared to the beginning of 2015.

Builders closed 382 new-home sales in Clark County in January, up 3.5 percent — or 13 sales — from January 2015, according to a report by Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research.

The median sales price of January’s closings was $309,177, down 2.8 percent from a year earlier.

Builders also pulled 511 new-home permits in January, up 25.5 percent from a year ago and “a good start” to 2016, Home Builders Research founder Dennis Smith wrote in the report.

Despite the rise in construction plans, Smith said that overall he was “disappointed that sales and production didn’t show more upward movements.”

Builders started 2013 and 2014 with more first-month sales than this year — 516 and 405, respectively. And sales figures still are far below the hyper-inflated boom years last decade, Smith’s data show.

In January 2006, builders sold 2,815 new homes — 41 percent of last year’s entire sales total.

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