Valley home sales surpass ‘03 numbers

Jennifer Shubinski

Thursday, Dec. 30, 2004 | 10:41 a.m.

Last year's record Las Vegas homes sales made many people rub their eyes with disbelief -- but with 2004 not even over, Las Vegas has surpassed its own record before the end of the year.

While year-end numbers won't be available until mid-January, November's new and resale home sales were released Wednesday by Home Builder's Research Inc., and company President Dennis Smith sums up the numbers with a word: "Wow."

The number of recorded new home sales in November was 2,546, bringing the 2004 sum to 26,045 -- a 3 percent increase over last year's year-end total of 25,230, according to Home Builders Research.

Resales in November totaled 4,374, bringing the 2004 total to 59,839 -- a 20 percent increase over last year's year-end total of 49,792, Home Builders Research reported.

"And we still have one month to go," Smith said.

Despite the large number of home sales, probably the most impressive market statistic so far was the number of new home permits pulled from January to November, Smith said. There were 1,733 permits pulled in November, bringing the permit count to 30,959, a year-to-year increase of almost 40 percent.

"That's a huge increase over last year and that has nothing to do with (apartment to) condo conversions," Smith said. "I think the permits next year will again be close to 30,000."

He said the valley has never had more than 26,000 new home permits pulled in a year.

The reason for the high number of new home permits pulled is that builders are simply pulling permits "whenever they can get them," Smith said.

New home prices also continued to rise but the median price for a resale home fell.

The median price of a new home in November jumped to $284,755 in November from $272,930 in October. Year-over-year, the price tag for a new home in November saw an increase of $76,824, or 37 percent, Home Builders Research reported.

After hovering around the $250,000 mark for the past couple months, the median price for a resale home in November was $249,900, a drop from October's median price of $252,000. Despite the slight price drop, November's median resale price was still a year-to-year change of $71,0000, or almost 40 percent.

Smith said the sales were really generated in the first half of this year when the market was in overdrive, not the last six months which saw demand slack off and inventory increase in both new and resale homes.

"Our numbers were really formed during the first six months of the year," he said. "We didn't need the rest of the year to reach those numbers."