LV real estate boom continues

Jennifer Shubinski

Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003 | 10:56 a.m.

Sales of new and existing homes in the Las Vegas area fell by 1,077 from September to October, but are still on track to shatter records for the year.

While the number of Las Vegas-area resale homes fell in October, the number of existing homes sold during the first 10 months of the year exceeded the number sold for all of last year, research firm SalesTraq reported Monday.

Through October, 38,248 existing homes were sold in the Las Vegas Valley, compared to 34,996 in 2002.

Steve Bottfeld, executive vice president at Marketing Solutions, which releases a housing market newsletter with SalesTraq, expects the valley to shatter more records by the end of the year.

"Las Vegas is on track to exceed 70,000 (new and existing) homes sold this year, in a market that has never sold 60,000 homes in one year," Bottfeld said.

Lynn Stringer, a broker/salesman with Realty Executives, said resales are being fueled by a limited housing market.

"Anything that comes on the market is gone," she said. "The prices have continued up and with such a limited amount of product available, the sellers are in a win-win situation."

Houses were on the market an average of 34 days in October. A market is often considered "hot" when homes are sold within 60 days.

Stringer said she is seeing multiple offers and bidding wars for houses in the $250,000 to $450,000 range.

"One of my clients asked me why we can't negotiate," Stringer said. "I said, 'If you want this house, you give them the full price and don't ask for anything.' "

In October, 4,124 resale homes closed escrow, compared to 4,857 in September, SalesTraq reported.

Some local market-watchers have said the high number of homes sold in September was caused by people trying to beat the state's increased real estate transfer tax.

October's numbers represented a 21 percent increase over the same month last year, when 3,402 existing homes closed escrow.

The median price of a resale home continued to increase at about 1 percent a month, reaching $174,000, SalesTraq reported. That compares to $150,000 the same month a year ago.

The number of new homes sold in October also fell when compared to September. In October, 2,184 new homes sold, down from the 2,528 new homes sold in the previous month, SalesTraq reported.

The number of new homes closed escrow on in October exceeded the number of homes sold in October 2002 by 16 percent, SalesTraq reported.

The price of a new home fell slightly, month over month.

In October, the median price of a new home was $208,124, down from $210,000 in September. October's median new-home price was 13 percent over the October 2002 new home prices of $184,159.

Bottfeld said that decrease is probably because of more expensive homes selling out in previous months, leaving less expensive product on the market.

One significant factor in the home market in Las Vegas is demand by investors.

Bottfeld estimated that investors comprise a little less than 10 percent of the market.

"That's a significant portion of the market," he said.

Bottfeld said he doesn't think investor activity in the market could hurt it as a whole, unless job growth halted.

"What would kill Las Vegas is something that would take away jobs," he said. "I don't see anything on the horizon that could hurt the market."