Local home prices stuck at $300,000

For the third straight month, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, GLVAR, reported that local home prices are hovering at $300,000, while the number of homes on the market continues to increase.

In its monthly housing statistics released early in June, GLVAR reported the median price for existing single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada through its Multiple Listing Service, MLS, during May was an even $300,000 — the same price GLVAR reported for both March and April.

That’s up 1.7 percent from $295,000 in May of 2018.

Meanwhile, the median price of local condos and town homes sold in May was $179,500. That was up 12.2 percent from May of 2018.

“The rate of appreciation has really been slowing down, and that has become especially apparent over the past few months,” said 2019 GLVAR President Janet Carpenter, a longtime local Realtor. “In fact, the 1.7 percent increase in local home prices we’re showing in this month’s GLVAR statistics is the smallest year-over-year increase we’ve seen since May of 2012, when prices increased just 1.6 percent from that same month one year earlier. Of course, one big difference between now and seven years ago is the median home price back then was only $128,000.”

Before slowing down this year, local home prices had generally been rising since early 2012, inching back toward their all-time peak. According to GLVAR, the median price of existing single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada peaked at $315,000 in June of 2006. Local home prices hit a post-recession bottom of $118,000 in January of 2012.

Carpenter said a similar trend has been occurring with home sales, which are posting modest increases compared to last year at this time.

The total number of existing local homes, condos and town homes sold during May was 4,045.

Compared to one year ago, May sales were up 4.5 percent for homes and up 1.9 percent for condos and town homes.

At the current sales pace, Carpenter said Southern Nevada still has less than a three-month supply of homes available for sale.

The housing supply is up from one year ago, but still below what would normally be considered a balanced market.

By the end of May, GLVAR reported 7,855 single-family homes listed for sale without any sort of offer. That’s up 90.7 percent from one year ago.

For condos and town homes, the 1,876 properties listed without offers in May represented a 134.8 percent jump from one year ago.

GLVAR reported a total of 42,876 local property sales in 2018, down from 45,388 in all of 2017.

At the current sales pace, Carpenter expects sales numbers to be similar or slightly lower this year than last year.