Las Vegas real estate insiders discuss the local marketplace

Every quarter Southern Nevada housing experts meet up to talk about pressing issues in the industry and as is well-known now there are a lot of them to get into. It's aptly called the Crystal Ball housing outlook. Couple of items in the last meeting stand out for further commentary and deliberation.

One of them is new home construction. The real estate boom in Las Vegas was at its hottest roughly from 2004 to 2006. Right in the middle of that, or 2005, local builders produced 38,000 new homes when consumer demand then justified only 25,000, reports SalesTraq, a real estate research shop. That amounts to 13,000 houses out there that would not find an owner any time soon, a serious case of over-building. It's easy to see from that why the housing market here tanked so badly. It also causes many to scratch their heads over builders' ability to forecast demand. What happened to that important piece of business planning?

Please click on the link to read the entire article.

Southern Nevada should learn from a past housing fiasco in California

As the U.S. Treasury, according to the recently approved rescue plan, prepares to buy distressed real estate assets to help the faltering financial and mortgage sectors get back on their feet, a real danger lurks in the shadows for Las Vegas. And other communities across the land. The example of what happened in California about 20 years ago will shed light on how the state's agony was prolonged for years.

That time the federal government's Resolution Trust Corporation was tasked with fixing the savings-and-loan meltdown, many still remember that, and it went ahead and executed an aggressive sales program of troubled real estate units wherever they were in California. To timely move the unwanted inventory prices were lowered and as a result sales were brisk. But the buyers were mostly investors who often flipped the properties for a quick profit. Ultimately a host of these homes became rentals and that further depressed property values in untold communities. To quickly solve the problem the RTC simply dumped real estate on the market without much concern for how it would play out in the long run.

Please, click on the above link to read the entire article.

Las Vegas resales increase while prices decrease in September

Existing single-family houses continued selling well in Southern Nevada in September, as was reported by the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, or GLVAR, that used the MLS for its statistics. All in all 2,783 single-family homes were closed, a nice upsurge from 2,545 done in August and a considerable improvement from a year ago when only 990 homes were sold. Sales numbers have steadily moved up all year, a hopeful sign of better days ahead.

The main reason to the accelerating sales is declining price levels that in turn are largely influenced by the record number of foreclosures. Median values have retreated by some 31% from last year this time which is a large swing. If that's what it takes, however, to get the housing market in Las Vegas back on track, then so be it. Market forces are powerful and will eventually bring much-needed balance to the local real estate environment. The median existing single-family house price slipped below $200,000 for the first time, a psychological yardstick that many thought would never be broken going down. It now reads $195,000 and could continue still lower in the coming months.

Please click on the link to read the entire article.

Las Vegas seeks to benefit from HUD foreclosure measure

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, has received a grant that totals almost $4 billion to aid cities and states embroiled in mortgage foreclosures. These funds in fact were put aside for this purpose in the recently passed Housing and Economic Recovery Act.

The effort has a fitting name, too, The Neighborhood Stabilization Program, and its aim is to let local and state governments, like Las Vegas and Nevada, use the available money under certain guidelines. They can tear down or restore abandoned homes and buy land temporarily to stabilize deteriorating areas and then promote redevelopment. To read the entire article, please click on the link.