Despite numerous predictions of bubbles and woe, the Las Vegas housing market is prepared to pull off yet another record year.
The latest figures from a Las Vegas research firm shows 85,074 closings on new and existing homes in the Las Vegas Valley from the months of January thru November 2005. This figure already surpasses the 84,595 homes sold in the entire year of 2004. The median price on resales was $280,000 in November 2005 which is up 12.9 percent over $247,945 in November 2004.
The average number of days a resale home spends on the market is 45 days which is slightly up from 41 days in November 2004. However, the number of sellers who obtained their full asking price in Las Vegas is a whopping 98 percent, the same as last year.
Local builders sold 34,631 units through November 2005 which is an increase of 17.7 percent over home sales of 29,187 sold last year. The median home price of those homes rose from $288,447 in November 2004 up 5.4 percent to $303,903 this year.
Real estate developers sold 849 condominium conversions in November which account for almost a quarter of the 3,824 units sold marketwide. Condo conversions have a median sales price of $171,940 which figure helps to keep new homes at a median of approximately $300,000 for the past month.
Experts believe that the current plateau of $300,000 will not last since there was a similar stabilization in 2004 when the median price remained at $250,000 from July to December. They further believe that the resale median will be over $300,000 within the next year. They further state that, barring any unforeseeable catastrophic event, the only factor that could slow the Las Vegas real estate market in 2006 would be a significant increase in Federal Reserve interest rates – which they claim they do not see in the immediate future.
Additionally, the local Valley real estate market is expected to remain healthy due to the influx of approximately 5,000 new residents each month. Agents continue to receive phone calls from out-of-state buyers looking to move to Las Vegas as well as local homeowners seeking to upgrade their homes to a larger size or those with big pieces of property wishing to downsize to something more manageable.
