Lower prices keeping this home-sale sector hopping

Las Vegas Sun

Monday, May 18, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The 3,198 Realtor-listed home sales in April were the most sales since August 2005, and a whopping 78 percent more than sold in April 2008.

Sharply dropping prices fueled the sales jumps, and Las Vegas is on pace to set a monthly record for the most sales in the next month or two if recent trends continue.

The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported the April sales number, a 7.3 percent increase over March and the first time sales have surpassed 3,000 since August 2005’s 3,331. Sales have continued to increase as prices have declined and given the trend, sales could soon surpass the all-time high of 3,552 in June 2004.

The median price of homes sold in April was $141,720, a 4.9 percent decline from $149,000 in March and a 40 percent drop from April 2008, when the price was $235,875.

The median sales price of homes listed by Realtors peaked at $315,000 in June 2006. That means the price has dropped 55 percent in nearly three years and is at its lowest level since 2001, Realtors’ President Sue Naumann said.

Foreclosed properties accounted for 80 percent of the sales in April.

“Whether this is good news or not depends on your point of view,” Naumann said. “But buyers are taking advantage of historic bargains, with mortgage interest rates at an all-time low, and home prices more affordable than they’ve been in a generation.”

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Allegiant Travel recently won a contract to supply charter flights from Miami to four cities in Cuba. Flights will begin in June.

Allegiant Travel is the parent company of Las Vegas-based Allegiant Airlines, which specializes in delivering people from small communities to resort cities such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Allegiant’s charter business is a small but important piece of the company’s revenue picture, accounting for 7 percent of its revenue in the first quarter.

The new contract is part of a program with the Treasury Department’s foreign assets control office. Several air carriers have held contracts to shuttle eligible travelers, and Allegiant is one of the latest to fly what is expected to be a growing number of people.

Tyri Squyres, a spokeswoman for Allegiant, said flights from Miami to Cuba will take about a half-hour.

Allegiant will provide one of its MD-80 series twin-engine jets and the flight crew. Separate companies handle reservations.

An unusual restriction on flight crews is that once they’re on Cuban soil, they can’t leave the aircraft.

“It’s pretty much loading the plane, flying the plane and unloading the plane,” she said.

— Richard N. Velotta

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Dan Van Epp remains bullish on Las Vegas.

Van Epp, a former executive with the Howard Hughes Corp., the Rouse Co. and Newland Communities, continues to work with Newland to help Union Park move forward.

Van Epp says Southern Nevada was the first place in the country to go through the downturn in the housing market and is likely the first market that will see an upswing because of the increased affordability.

“We had the steepest decline in prices, and we now have single-family homes priced at half of what they were in 2003 and 2004,” Van Epp says. “At that price, you make the single-family home a lot more attractive to a lot more people.”

Las Vegas is taking the right steps in what needs to be done to correct its economy, Van Epp says. Lower resort room pricing is the key to getting people to come back in greater numbers, he says.

“They are going to flock back to Las Vegas, and when that happens, our own unemployment rate will get much better, and that is part of the equation to buying homes,” Van Epp says.

The commercial market, however, has a long way to go both locally and nationally, Van Epp says.

“It is way too early to predict the demise of Las Vegas,” Van Epp says. “We have a very bright future.”

Longer versions of these stories appear in this week’s In Business Las Vegas, a sister publication of the Sun.