Las Vegas real estate market sluggish

There have lately been small signs of improvement in the local housing market and anything positive on that front is warmly embraced. Perhaps the low mortgage rates are helping out, perhaps the sellers are pricing their homes more realistically, could be the buyers have realized that now is the time to make a move. Or it's a little bit of all of them.

The Southern Nevada Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose slightly in November to 133.06. The index is compiled by the UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research and really is a six-month economic forecast from the month the data was collected. Overall, it has been relatively flat since March of 2005.

New and existing home sales remain about 48% behind last year's numbers according to October's data, which has been the pattern for several months and was expected. The median new home price declined by 7.9%, to $300,812, from October in 2006. Builders have aggressively cut prices in many subdivisions to move unsold inventory, but it hasn't eroded the median price that much. Not yet anyway.

A bright spot in the real estate arena is the new home permits, which more than doubled from October a year ago, from 860 to 1,840, per Home Builders Research . The figure is somewhat misleading because a new building code went into effect on November 1 and builders decided to pile up on permits under the old code. Those rascals. We'll see in the next few months if a pattern is forming.

Once the residential real estate sector reverses course, it'll undoubtedly begin pushing the economic index up.