Las Vegas condos slow to close

Southern Nevada hardly had any condominium market just a few short years ago. Especially the high-rise component was pretty much non-existent, save the Regency at Las Vegas Country Club. Then the Turnberry Place was built and it proved hugely successful and things sort of got fired up from there. Over time Vegas had created a reputation that no matter how many new hotel rooms were built, they always got filled with eager visitors. Many of the developers who wanted to come to town and follow the Turnberry recipe, apparently bought into that same idea. Just keep putting them up, condos that is, and they'll come.

They did come early on in the boom cycle, that's true, but things have slowed down considerably now. Many who did recently have aspirations to purchase a unit here are holding off as the market reports aren't that favorable any more. Demand has nearly dried up in the more expensive price points and with that comes the inevitable, prices start sinking.

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Southern Nevada home sales increase again

Las Vegas homeowners and would-be buyers are anxiously keeping an eye on the local real estate market. Homeowners want to see the price slide to finally come to halt as they've already lost a large chunk of equity during the last few years. Prospective buyers are trying to gauge when the time is ripe to make a move and purchase a home before values start climbing again.

The situation appears to be slowly turning favorable for both groups. As reported by the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, or GLVAR, prices seem to be stabilizing now. In May the median single-family house price moved up a notch from the previous month and in June it slipped 4.9%, so it's bouncing along within a narrow band now. The actual median price came in at $225,000. Compared with the June of 2007 price, the drop is much wider at 26.2% and that can make anyone wonder how did that happen.

The truly positive trend that has industry observers raving is the sales volume of single-family houses. According to GLVAR 2,226 homes were sold in June, up from 2,026 in May. But the remarkable thing here is the year-to-year improvement which grew a whopping 50.8%. That's right, 50 some percent better than in June of 2007.

As has been the case in the last several months, mortgage lender foreclosures again played a big role in the sales numbers. REOs, or real estate owned, have generally accounted for about half of recent closings, but in June they carved out an even larger share of the pie, 65% in all. Regardless, the key thing here is to burn the inventory further down as soon as possible.

Talking about the single-family house listing inventory, another critical element to a healthy housing market, it has edged upward over the last several months which still causes some concern. It moved higher an insignificant 0.2% in June to 23, 388 homes, but is lower by 1.1% from a year ago.

The real estate news from Las Vegas are cautiously getting better. Let's hope there is staying power to it.

Where is Las Vegas on this affordable markets list?

A few weeks ago MSN gave Sperling's Best Places a call and asked them to put together a ranking of most affordable places to live right now. The survey is officially called the 2008 MSN Real Estate Most-livable Bargain Markets list. Okay, kind of long but we'll take a look at it anyway. The criteria was as follows; concentrate on the 100 largest metro areas, find the most affordable ones by using the median income to median home price ratio, then take into account unemployment rate, commute times and the availability of decent entertainment and recreation.

Here are the top nine cities, each with a population over 500,000; Wichita, Kan., Omaha, Neb., Harrisburg-Carlisle, Pa., Madison, Wis., San Antonio, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Dallas-Fort Worth and Tulsa, Okla. It's a fine collection of urban areas that are offering residents reasonable housing and good job opportunities, two very important elements in today's trying economic environment.

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