Report: Las Vegas home values furthest from peak

A house is shown for sale Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016, in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas home values are on the rise — but they have more room to climb than any large metro area to reach peak levels again, a new report shows.

The median home value in the Las Vegas area last month was $201,900, up 9 percent from a year earlier. Nationally, the median was $184,600, up 4.3 percent, according to home-listing service Zillow.

But reflecting how high values soared in Las Vegas during the housing bubble and how badly they crashed, home values here remain 33.8 percent below their peak.

Home values nationally, by comparison, are 5.9 percent below their peak, Zillow found.

Las Vegas’ yawning gap was largest among the 35 metro areas listed in the report, surpassing other boom-and-bust areas including Orlando, Fla. (29.5 percent below its peak); Riverside, Calif. (25.5 percent); and Phoenix (21.1 percent).

Other cities, however, have recouped their post-bubble losses and reached new highs. According to Seattle-based Zillow, home values hit new peaks in 26 markets in the past year or so.

Such areas are “no longer making up ground lost during the housing recession” but are “laying a new path forward” based on demand and economic growth, Zillow Chief Economist Svenja Gudell said in the report.

“In some markets, these new highs are a return to normalcy,” she said. “The fact that other markets are still off by double-digits may not mean those markets are far from being recovered. It just highlights how extraordinarily inflated home values had been during the housing bubble.”

Also reflecting Las Vegas’ gap: The valley has the highest rate of underwater borrowers in America.

Some 21 percent of Las Vegas-area homeowners with mortgages are underwater, meaning their debt outweighs their home’s value, according to Zillow.

That’s down from a peak of 71 percent in early 2012 but still highest among large metro areas.

Business

Share