Friday Figures for 1/1/2010
Happy New Year, and thanks for reading Friday Figures! All information from the GLVAR MLS system. This is the “real deal” that you and your Realtor need to know before touring, making offers, or listing property in the Las Vegas Valley this weekend!
Summary: Available listings drifted back under 11,000 again, continuing a trend of stability at this level. List prices on available units is however sliding a little. It is worth remembering that some listings agreements expired at midnight last night; today is technically a holiday, so Monday may see an influx of 100-300 renewed listings. The number of contingent and pending listings continued to drop, but remains over 13,000 for the time being. The gap between list price and final sales price is widening, with median buyers typically paying $5000 over asking price. Nobody is getting “lowball” offers accepted except in the most unusual of circumstances.
Other Information: Many thanks to Flipchip over at Prof’s Las Vegas Blog for posting some excellent photos of last night’s fireworks! For more photos of the festivities, check out this page from Chanel 8′s Las Vegas Now. (Yes, the lady who does the news on CSI is our real newscaster.) However, if you only have time to read one item on the Vegas economy and where it is going, it should be this one. Does Vegas depend too much on gaming? The last few paragraphs deal very specifically with real estate:
Don’t look for a construction boom anytime soon in Las Vegas given the excess in homes and commercial buildings, [UNLV economist Mary] Riddel says. One count had more than 15,000 homes, apartments and condominiums without prospective buyers or renters, she says. [snip]
The concern is that prices, which have started to stabilize, are in danger of falling again, Riddel says. The reason is that a homebuyer tax credit artificially inflates prices and when the program ends in 2010, prices might decline again, she says.
Riddel says she expects another wave of foreclosures because many homeowners haven’t been making their payments, and banks haven’t moved against them because they have a backlog. She said banks have no incentive to put every foreclosure on the market right away to further depress prices.