Home prices in Vegas area rise again

Jennifer Shubinski

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 | 11 a.m.

Though the Las Vegas-area residential real estate market is cooling off -- homes are not selling in hours and waiting lists for new homes have all but disappeared -- builders continue to plan for new homes.

In June, there were 16,985 new lots mapped, compared with 819 in May and 359 June 2003, Larry Murphy, president of research firm SalesTraq reported this morning. A final map means that land owned by a home builder has been mapped for houses and they have been assigned individual parcel numbers.

Of those newly mapped lots, about 2,000 were for apartment-to-condo conversions, Murphy said.

Despite the large number of homes in the pipeline, Murphy said there is a long way to go before the valley gets back to a "normal" market -- when there is some standing inventory of new homes. Many builders have hundreds -- some have more than a thousand -- of homes sold but not yet built, and Murphy said demand will most likely keep up through the year.

The median price of existing and new homes was almost identical in June -- $245,000 and $247,000, respectively, Murphy reported. One reason for the close prices (new homes historically have cost more than resale homes in the Las Vegas area) may be apartment-to-condo conversions, which are classified as new homes and often are in the $100,000 range, keeping the new home price statistic down, Murphy said.

The median price of existing homes increased from $230,000 in May and $165,000 in June 2003. For new homes, the median price was an increase from $240,950 in May and $200,034 in June 2003.