Southern Nevada existing home sales steady in July

The real estate market in Las Vegas valley, including in Summerlin, Seven Hills, Green Valley and Henderson, had several strong months late in the spring and heading into the summer, mostly because of low mortgage rates and ever more affordable prices. Those two conditions sure do have that something extra to attract buyers, in this day and age generally first-timers and investors, to make a play for it.

GLVAR, or the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, affirms that for July the statistics are still relatively strong, although some slowdown from previous months is evident. The single-family home inventory inched lower by 0.9%, from 20,613 in June to 20,423. It is gradually coming down. Many housing experts in Las Vegas would like to see it do so a bit faster. It is down, though, by 12.8% from last year.

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Energy Efficient Mortgage by FHA assists homeowners with utility bills

FHA Energy Efficient Mortgage, or EEM, has been available for years but hasn't really caught on that well. Not yet anyway. Washington is just now tooling up a national campaign to highlight the importance of energy conservation in housing. It's allocating a lot of resources to it. As a result the EEM is for sure going to get more media exposure in the coming months and could even be enhanced with some additional incentives.

FHA EEM basically works now like this. The borrower would purchase or refinance a principal residence, going through a standard FHA home loan approval process, and then can add the cost of energy efficient improvements on top of the mortgage. He doesn't need to qualify for the extra money nor is it part of the down payment calculations. One- to four-unit existing and new properties are the real thing.

The cost of improvements that may be eligible under FHA EEM is the lesser of the two below:

- The actual total of cost-effective energy improvements, as well as the cost of the report and inspections, or
- The lesser of 5% of:
- The value of the home, or
- 115% of the median area value of a single-family home, or
- 150% of the conforming Freddie Mac limit. Kind of complicated right here.

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CityCenter Las Vegas sold condominiums to be repriced

Southern Nevada condo market has fared as poorly in recent years as the battered single-family sector. The slump is afflicting everything with the condo banner hanging over it; the luxury high-rises, the contemporary mid-rises and the homey low-rises. A whole bunch of units on Strip glass buildings have gone unsold for a long while, dating back to when the bubble began loudly leaking air. The ones, easily hundreds, that have deposits on them haven't closed either because mortgage money has pretty much dried up. Moreover, the drastic value loss has caused many would-be buyers to balk at finalizing their purchases.

MGM Mirage's CityCenter condos, the three are Veer Towers, Vdara Condo Hotel and The Residences at Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas, are in the middle of that kind of a row with buyers. A while back MGM Mirage stood rather firm at the original price structure despite loud appeals that they work with them. But the resort giant's mind has changed recently.

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HARP ceiling lifts up to 125% loan-to-value

Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, was recently amended. Relief Refinance Mortgage by Freddie Mac comes under this title. It's now in the books that the previous limit of 105% has been pushed up to 125% loan-to-value, or LTV, something that Washington had been playing with for a bit. "This is a change that will put affordable refinancing opportunities within reach of performing borrowers who have suffered the effects of local home price erosion," explained coolly a Freddie Mac suit. Eligible homeowners are current on their loan payments and have a mortgage owned or guaranteed by the agency.

Freddie Mac's Relief Refinance Mortgage has some usable features, too, that might be of interest to Las Vegas homeowners. It allows borrowers to finance closing and financing costs and prepaids/escrows up to $5,000, or 4% of the mortgage balance to be refinanced, whichever is less. Moreover, mortgage insurance, or MI, is not needed if the underlying note does not have one. If there happens to be an MI on the existing mortgage, the new one must keep the same coverage. That's nice.

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FHA mortgage making an impact in Southern Nevada

FHA's market share in Las Vegas a few years ago was very narrow because the conventional home loan product was generally offering much better terms. And then comes the mother of all housing slumps that mauls the conventional mortgage sector and gives FHA a fresh opportunity to show what it can do. And it's rising to the occasion.

A good deal of the real estate action in Las Vegas today is at the lower end of the market where prices have truly become affordable, be it a single-family home or a condo or a townhouse. Values have been unsympathetically rolled back to the levels of the late 1990s. This has handed the first-time home buyer, someone who hasn't owned a home in the past three years, a chance of a lifetime and he is taking advantage of it.

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