Report: Median home sale price drops another $10,000

By Buck Wargo

Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009 | 2 a.m.

After a rotten 2008, this year got off to a really bad start — so bad that even the most optimistic housing analyst in Las Vegas is concerned.

Sales of new and existing homes tumbled in January and foreclosures rose from December, according to statistics released by SalesTraq. The median price of existing homes sold in January tumbled another $10,000, dropping the price to $150,000. That’s a 48 percent drop from the highest price for existing homes at $288,000 in February 2007.

Analyst Steve Bottfeld said the dismal month makes it more difficult to predict where the market is heading, calling last month’s numbers the worst January for real estate in the city’s history.

“While I suspect we are near the bottom of the market, the data suggest that it could sink further,” said Bottfeld, executive vice president of Marketing Solutions, who works in conjunction with SalesTraq. “Given the recent withdrawals of significant convention business, the job picture is now cloudy. It will be spring before we have any comfortable idea of where the market is truly headed.”

Notwithstanding the difficulty in forecasting the market, Bottfeld and SalesTraq’s Larry Murphy predict that by the end of the year the median price for existing homes will be no lower than $150,000.

The two predict sales of existing homes will essentially match the 31,617 in 2008. There were 2,737 sales in January, a 72 percent increase over January 2008, but that’s the fewest number of sales since June’s 2,785.

Foreclosures continue to drive down prices of existing homes. Sixty-four percent of the home closings in January were bank-owned properties with a median price of $139,000. The other 36 percent had a median price of $170,000, Murphy said.