Last month Larry Murphy of SalesTraq Marketing Solutions said:
April’s housing data for Las Vegas, as expected, was a continuation of the housing bottom we have been scraping along for nearly six months.
Well that scraping along noise continues- the bottom got longer and lower this month. According to data from the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, (GLVAR) while the single family sales number of 1,568 in May was up nearly 14% from April’s 1,381 year-over-year they were down 39% from last year’s 2,556. This marks the third straight year of decline from May 2004 when home sales peaked at 3,204:
The median sales price continues it’s slide- the median price of a single family home in Las Vegas fell from last year’s $310,000 to $301,352- a drop of 2.8%. This figure is not adjusted for inflation. This is the lowest the median price has been at since June 2005, when the median price was exactly $300,000.
If the single family market was unbearably slow for sellers in May, life was even tougher for condo sellers. While May’s condo sales figure of 373 is up 26% month-over-month from April’s 296, this is an expected spring increase. Year-over-year however, sales are down 38% year from last year’s 605, and less than half of their peak in 2005 when 751 homes sold in May.
There’s no question that today’s ugliest graph is the condo median price graph–prices dropped a whopping 6% from last year’s $202,000 to $189,999 in May of this year. This is the lowest median price for condominiums since May 2005 when the median price was $186,000.
For both the single family and condominium markets, record high inventory , tightening lending standards and agressive homebuilders are continuing to put downward pressure on prices. This downward "bottom slide" shows no sign of slowing in the near future.
Great work, Twist. You should forward the link to Hubble Smith before he writes his story in the next couple days. Otherwise, I can already tell you what his headline in the LV paper will be: “Sales up 14 percent,” with plenty of “bottom” quotes from the usual cast of REIC shills.
Also, the condo sales bump is seasonal, as you noted, but plenty of high-rise units have been closing in recent weeks, too, so that might be skewing the numbers. Hard to say.
– The Judge
“Sell now or be priced in forever”
Anyone hear about all the banks that are going to go under in 2009? Just heard the rumor last night from a friend in the financial industry. Don’t know the specifics, just heard that training and facilitation in that area is being ramped up.
Sounds like all the good RE deals are still a year or two away.
From your graph it is clear that we have been following the seasonal ups and downs with a strong downward trend. Thus in Aug-Sep is seasonally when the prices drop considerably, as luck would have it that is also when most of this year’s resets will take place. I think it will be a good idea to invest in companies that sell anti-depressions I cannot imagine getting through to November and not having the market come crashing down. It will be a golden age for the Repo man.
-Just my two cents
Excellent work! I’m not too familiar with the Vegas market and so this really helped me see where things have been and where they are headed.
The graphs are purdy
Any tips on making them? I made some for the Irvine market a few months ago and they were standard Excel fugly.
Zovall-
I have Excel 2007, so I can do a few more tricky things with gradients [multiple stops] than I could with the old version.
There’s a lot of fun stuff you can do with ‘97 though if you mess around with it enough. Once you do the plain vanilla graph, try right clicking on say either the chart area or the graph itself, then choose “format”- [I think it's the bottom choice- I've been on the new version for a few months though.
Once you’re there you can mess with colors, gradients etc. It’s more fun than a regular graph!