Twas the Friday before Christmas, and all through the Las Vegas Valley, Realtors, buyers, and sellers needed the information in today’s Friday Figures! All information from the GLVAR MLS system. Read this before touring, making offers, or listing property in the Las Vegas Valley this weekend!

Summary: Available properties dropped just below 11,000 again! For perspective, 6 months ago we had just over 15,000 units. the price spread between bank owned and short sale homes seems to be shrinking; while short sales are usually in better condition than foreclosures, they take much more time to close. Whether this is a worthwhile trade-off is a decision each buyer should make for him/herself. Contingent and pending sales are down, but still over 14,000. The backlog of contingent short sales, however, continues to get bigger. Closings remain strong. Expect next week to be a little light on closings as most title offices will close for the holidays. On the other hand, when the title offices and mortgage brokers are open, expect them to be very busy trying to get things closed up before the end of the year!

Other Information: Nevada is swearing more foreclosure mediators, but we have yet to see if the program is really working. After all, the federal Make Home Affordable loan modification program is only seeing success rates of about 4%. A bit of good news is that Citi, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac are all declaring a temporary halt on foreclosures for the holidays. Of course, this only adds to the estimated 1.7 million homes in “foreclosure backlog,” homes that are considered at risk of being foreclosed upon in the near future. More good news is that 36 states, including Nevada, have decreasing unemployment rates. That probably has something to do with why our new home sales are rising. Next Friday is Christmas, so Friday Figures may be published off schedule.

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