Report on home prices a mixed bag for Las Vegas

By Steve Green

Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2010 | 8:21 a.m.

The Standard & Poor's credit rating company is out with another good-news, bad-news report on the Las Vegas housing market.

Standard & Poor's today issued its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for October and they show prices in Las Vegas fell 0.2 percent from September and fell 3.6 percent from October 2009. That's the bad news.

The good news is that on a month-to-month basis, Las Vegas outperformed most of the 19 other big U.S. cities tracked in the indices, as the nation's housing market generally deteriorated in October.

Prices in the 20 cities on average fell 1.3 percent from September to October -- and were down 0.8 percent on a year-to-year basis.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, Las Vegas prices fell 0.6 percent from September to October. That compares to a 1 percent average decline for the 20 cities tracked.

The Standard & Poor's numbers show that prices in Las Vegas -- hurt hard by the national recession and foreclosures locally -- are nearing levels seen in 2000 before prices soared in the mid 2000s.

Standard & Poor's analysts were bearish in commenting on today's report.

In October, only four metropolitan statistical areas tracked by the indices – Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington D.C. – showed year-over-year gains. Six markets – Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Portland, Ore.; Seattle and Tampa – hit their lowest levels since home prices started to fall in 2006 and 2007.

That means average home prices in those markets have fallen beyond the recent lows seen in most other markets in the spring of 2009.

"The double-dip (decline) is almost here, as six cities set new lows for the period since the 2006 peaks. There is no good news in October’s report. Home prices across the country continue to fall," David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's, said in a statement. "The trends we have seen over the past few months have not changed. The tax incentives are over and the national economy remained lackluster in October, the month covered by these data. Existing homes sales and housing starts have been reported for both October and November, and neither is giving any sense of optimism. On a year-over-year basis, sales are down more than 25 percent and the months’ supply of unsold homes is about 50 percent above where it was during the same months of last year. Housing starts are still hovering near 30-year lows.

"While delinquency rates might have seen some recent improvement, it is only on a relative basis. They are still well above their historic averages, in both the prime and sub-prime markets," he said.

Today's numbers compare to more recent data for Las Vegas from the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

The GLVAR earlier reported the median single-family home price in Southern Nevada during November was $134,900, up 1.4 percent from $133,000 in October, but down 3.6 percent from one year ago.

The median price of local condominiums and townhomes sold in November was $64,900, down 0.2 percent from $65,000 in October and down 4.6 percent from one year ago.