Report suggests Las Vegas housing market will hold course in ’16

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

If January was any indicator, Las Vegas’ housing market should experience more of the same in 2016 compared to recent years: higher prices, fewer purchases and over-reaching sellers.

Used-home buyers continued paying bigger price tags in January, and even though sales volume rose from a year ago, it remained well below recent years’ first-month totals.

Meanwhile, homeowners kept putting more properties on the market and sought payoffs that were well above the going rate.

The median sales price of single-family homes in Southern Nevada in January was $219,000, down 0.5 percent from December but up 9.5 percent from January 2015, according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

Owners sold 1,879 single-family homes last month, down 4.8 percent from December but up 4.7 percent from a year earlier.

Sellers who listed their home in January sought a median $248,950, up 5.9 percent from December and 10.6 percent year-over-year.

The GLVAR reports data from its listing service, which largely comprises previously owned homes.

The market still has its share of ups and downs — Las Vegas, for instance, remains the underwater capital of America and has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

But those and other economic problems have eased the past few years, and overall, the housing market is not as volatile as it once was.

In the past decade, the valley’s housing industry exploded in growth, collapsed during the recession, shot up from the depths thanks to bargain-hunting investors, and then cooled off with slower price growth and fewer sales.

“We’re expecting the local housing market to follow last year’s trends and stay fairly stable,” said GLVAR President Scott Beaudry, owner of Universal Realty, in a news release. “We still have challenges with our low housing supply and with too many underwater homeowners, but I see room for both of those issues to improve this year.”

Here’s a glance at January’s activity compared to the first month of each year since 2012, according to GLVAR data for single-family houses.

• Sales volume was second-lowest.

• New listings climbed for the third consecutive January to the highest tally since 2012.

• The median asking price of January’s listings was 13.7 percent above the median sales price of January’s closings, the largest first-month spread in the five-year timeframe.

Real Estate

Share