New-home prices, sales and permits up this year in Southern Nevada

A view of model homes in a Ryland Homes subdivision at Buffalo and Diablo drives in the southwest valley Sunday, April 5, 2015.

Las Vegas homebuilders are gaining speed with rising sales, prices and construction plans, a new report shows.

Builders sold 527 new homes in Southern Nevada last month, bringing the year’s total to 2,360, a year-to-year increase of 8.9 percent, according to Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research.

The median closing price in May was $315,250, up 12.6 percent from a year earlier.

Builders also pulled 680 new-home permits in May, putting this year’s tally at 3,289, a year-to-year jump of 23.3 percent.

Last year, Las Vegas’ homebuilding industry slumped with plunging sales totals and volatile prices.

Nearly all economic forecasts for the valley “are pretty positive,” and it’s “easy to suggest” that things will keep improving amid Las Vegas’ nation-leading pace of job growth, Home Builders Research President Dennis Smith said in the report.

The turnaround comes in a region that was ground zero for both the real estate bubble and the burst, where employers laid off workers en masse during the recession and the local economy all but collapsed.

“We must remind folks that the current statistics are compared to some very weak numbers,” Smith wrote.

Nevada’s unemployment rate has shrunk considerably since the depths of the downturn but remains one of the highest in the country.

The state's jobless rate was 7 percent last month, third-highest among the states and the District of Columbia, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Real Estate

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