Welcome to Friday Figures! All information from the GLVAR MLS system. Touring, making offers, or listing property in the Las Vegas Valley this weekend? Read this first!

Summary: Available listings remain solid, just under 11,000. The gap in price between short sale and bank owned properties has been getting smaller for some time, but this week there is no difference in median price. Are banks charging a premium for the “convenience” of no short sale, or are short sellers desperate to compete with low bank pricing? We had light closings in the last week, partly due to the New Years holiday and partly due to a rush from institutional sellers to get property off the books before the end of the year.

Other Information: I’m having a hard time getting worked up about the declining number of pending listings except for the fact that so many of them are short sales locally. Unfortunately, when it comes to moving these homes into “sold” status, we are being held hostage by the banks that hold the mortgages. I am far more concerned going forward with the high unemployment rate (jobless people obviously have trouble buying homes or paying mortgages) and an optimistically predicted 3 million foreclosures in 2010.

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