The median price of a resale home in the Las Vegas area has increased by about 10% from the previous year, December 2014 to December 2015. All of that increase occurred in the first six months with the market basically flat since then. I have tracked the median sales price on resale homes monthly since July 2006, when the median sales price was $319,000. The bottom of the market since then was a median price of $119,000 in December, 2011. Now the median sales price of a free-standing resale home in $220,000. See graph to visual representation of the price changes over the last 12 months.
Roughly 28,200 resale homes sold through November this year compared with 5,440 new homes through October. The pace of new home sales has accelerated somewhat, but keep in mind that nearly 39,000 new homes sold in 2005 alone.
The slow recovery on new home sales has to do, at least in part, with the gap between new home sales prices and resale prices. There has always been a gap, but historically the gap has been much less than the current one. Also, nationally the gap is narrower than the local one. The median price for a resale home, nationally in October was $281,500. That figure is 28%, or $61,900 higher than the median sales price of used homes that month. Locally new home median sales price was $316,825 in October. That was 64% or $123,825 than the median sales price of resales.
22% of local homeowners with mortgages are underwater, owning more than their home is worth. That is down from early 2012 when that figure was 71%. The present 22% is still higher than any other large U.S. metro area.
Condos and townhomes showed a somewhat larger increase in price. Comparing the median sales price for the last 6 months of 2014 with 2015, I show a 12.8% increase, this year over last. Using the same parameters, there was, for me, a surprising decrease in the median sales price for high-rise units of 11%. Also, somewhat surprising to me, was that the median size of high-rise unit sold in both 1024 and 2015 was around 1,100 sq. ft.
That is it for now. Looks like we have very stable market on our hands at this point in time. Happy holidays and have a happy new year.
