I will be at the United Studios of Self Defense Desert Shores Dojo on Friday, February 29, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM to meet you and answer any questions you may have about buying or selling property, local market conditions, the economy, and real estate in general.  I will also gladly set up appointments to list your property for sale, or help you find a great property to buy.  They are located at 8410 W. Cheyenne, Suite #104 (in front of Albertsons and CVS, for a map click here).  You will also be able to meet with representatives from other local businesses.

Yesterday, Sensei Brian told me there are a number of RSVPs, so to get your business represented or get a list of businesses that will be there, call him or Miss Teri today.  Their phone number is (702) 396-9944.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

I am proud to announce that I will be on hand at the United Studios of Self-Defense Desert Shores Dojo for a networking open house on Friday, February 29 from 6-8 PM. The dojo is at 8410 W. Cheyenne, Suite #104, near the intersection of Rampart/Durango and Cheyenne in the Albertsons parking lot.

I will be on hand to answer your questions about the Las Vegas real estate market, real estate in general, local neighborhoods, and of course I will be glad to discuss helping you buy or sell a home. If you have specific issues you want to discuss with me, don’t wait: call me at 702-727-7842 today! If you would like to search listings first, click here!

Other businesses will be on hand to discuss their products and services as well. For more information, a list of businesses that will be there, or to reserve room for your business, be sure to call 702-396-9944 and talk to Miss Teri or Sensei Bryan today!

The real estate market is like a giant boat:  it has a lot of momentum, it takes a while to get where it’s going, and it takes a lot to get it turned.  In the case of Las Vegas, tugboats are already on the scene, nudging us towards safe harbor.

The Review Journal picked up this article by Jim Woodard called Buyers can find benefits by making home purchase in current market. His main points are that record inventory means incredible selection, there are no bidding wars (well, personal experience suggests “few”), and interest rates on a 30 year fixed mortgage of under 6%. Sure, these things are true other places as well.

The other item is from Inman News, a great source of news and insight into the real estate market nationwide.  They actually took the time to tell us Second-home buyers flocking to Las Vegas.  They specifically talk about the City Center project, with “18.6 million-square-foot, $7.4 billion hotel, casino, retail and residential complex on 76 prime acres”, hiring “7,000 tradesmen and 350 supervisory personnel”, where “60 percent of all residences, starting at $500,000, have sold in the past 10 months.” Many of these units are being purchased as secondary residences, according to the article.  This says nothing of the jobs that will be created when their “60-story, 4,000-room hotel and casino” opens.  Of course, this is only 10% of the hotel rooms currently scheduled to come online in the Valley over the next few years.

One last local note:   Maybe you don’t have a half million dollars for a high-rise condo vacation home on the strip; but if one looks very carefully at the chart of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, it looks very suspiciously like homes in Vegas can be purchased for near 2004 prices.  Follow the emerald green line. Or money green if you prefer to think of it that way.

Particularly if you are investing with non-US Dollar denominated currencies, you should take advantage of the current market.  Your Canadian Dollars, Yen, Euros, Pounds, Francs, or what-have-you go further now than they have in a very long time.

It is true that Vegas housing prices have been dropping. It is also true that this drop has been accelerating over the last 4 months, and is even quite evident at the lower end of the market. As a case in point, here’s the latest Average Joe Median Price Index. One thing that is not obvious from this summary is that the drop is on declining volume. In short, even though actual closing prices are dropping, fewer homes are selling. Furthermore, this trend is over a long period, and not just a single month “who wants to move at Christmastime anyway” blip.

Now, if this were a stock chart, this data alone would not make me a buyer yet; a move on small volume is not necessarily to be trusted. However, there was still a huge drop in available listings over the last few months. The decline in total available listings was not due to homes being sold, but rather due to “expired” listings: homes that did not sell eventually were taken off the market because the listing agreement was out of date. Other homes were “withdrawn”: taken off market before the expiration date. Some of these unsold homes may re-appear on the market, but the combined number of “closed,” “withdrawn,” and “expired” listings makes for the sizable volume required to make my inner stock-chartist happy.

When you combine this with current mortgage rates — with good credit, a 30-year fixed rate can be had for well under 6%! — it looks like a a good time to buy in my opinion. Sure, prices may continue to decline for several months. Surely you are planning to own a home or condo for more than 6 months, aren’t you? And will interest rates be this low in several months? Even if Mr. Bernanke decides that rising commodity prices are a bigger risk to the economy than the mortgage mess?

This is a good time to contact me about selecting your Vegas house or condominium.

Follow Up: Another sign stock traders use to determine market direction is sentiment. But sentiment is an inverse indicator: When everyone is “bullish” is actually the time that things are about to change for the worse! The majority of people actually anticipating worse times in the market is actually a sign that things will change for the better. That being said, this rather small, not scientific survey from Tim Iocono suggests that only 3% of his readers expect a nationwide bottom in housing prices this year, and many readers think we won’t see a bottom until 2013. If sentiment is an inverse indicator in the housing market as it tends to be in the stock market, this is very good news indeed.

Yikes!  Yesterday’s Case-Shiller index posted a record drop in house prices.  It was the 10th straight month of falling prices.  The experts do not expect improvement soon because “Prices will probably remain under pressure as the jump in foreclosures puts even more homes on the market just as stricter lending rules make it harder for buyers to find financing.”  Every metro area surveyed was down month-over-month, even if a few were still up year-over year.  Here’s the data in chart form.

As a little bonus, check out this two-part item on the current housing mess from EconoSpeak:  one;  two.

Despite this rather dismal news, I am optimistic that on a local basis we are closer to the end than the beginning.  We are starting to work through inventory.  There is evidence that listing prices are becoming more realistic (even when it means a short sale).  Builders only have so much inventory:  they are not breaking ground on anything not already sold;  and since the end of the year is next week, the incentive to get property off the books for tax purposes is going away.  And topping all this off is the news that Nevada is once more the fastest growing state, with 2.56 million residents and a growth rate of 2.9%.  Since “demographic experts think the county’s population surged past the 2 million mark sometime in the past few months,”  that means almost 80% of the state’s population lives here in the Las Vegas Valley.  Those 2 million people and all the newcomers need places to live.

You may have read that Vegas is a rapidly growing city. Thousands of people move to the Las Vegas Valley every month, and many of those people have kids. Those kids, in turn, go to school. And that means that the Clark County School District is almost continually building new schools and hiring new teachers. If you are a teacher, and you are thinking of moving to Las Vegas, I have good news for you. The school district would like to help you buy a house:

Under the proposed agreement, dubbed Teachers First, the Nevada Housing Division would offer teachers — most of whom would be first-time homeowners — up to five years of payment assistance on a home or condominium mortgage for a maximum of $15,000.

Yesterday, I toured a new Master Planned community that will have two elementary schools and a junior high (there is already a high school about a mile away). The first of these schools is scheduled to open for the 2009-2010 school year. There were brand new 3 bedroom single family homes available for under $200,000. You can afford to move here and buy a house. I’ll tell you more about it later!

I am very fortunate to have colleagues like Tim Kuptz. Nobody knows the Vegas real estate market better than him, period. Every week, he looks at the actual market data and compiles it into a “snapshot” of current market conditions. Strangely enough, I first encountered his work several years ago while trying to get some facts and figures together for my personal site; I got the figures I needed and forgot all about his ongoing research until recently, when I began to seriously pursue my new career in real estate. Needless to say, I am delighted to have access to his experience and expertise on a regular basis.

But you want to know about that “good news”, don’t you? His current data suggests that:

While we are not at the bottom of the market in terms of price, we just may be at the bottom of the market in terms of sold transactions. This is the first step in turning the greater Las Vegas market around. Prices will continue flounder for another 6 to 8 months while resale transactions stabilize and even increase right after the first of the year.

Needless to say, I hope he’s right about that. Keeping in mind that he is specifically talking about the local housing market, the Vegas market peaked before several other hot markets, so it would be logical for it to recover a little early as well.