Housing market conditions in Las Vegas remain softer than a week-old banana, but real estate observers are seeing more signs of recovery with each passing month.
Housing
CARSON CITY — Last spring state legislators were certain the foreclosure crisis in Nevada was so severe that thousands of residents each month would apply for assistance under a new law to help them keep their homes.
Las Vegas real estate agent Frank Nason has read numerous reports about Nevada leading the nation in foreclosures and the “phantom inventory” of foreclosures coming down the pike.
RENO — A possible wrinkle in the state’s plan to mediate home foreclosures is that mortgage lending companies often have foreclosure insurance, creating a disincentive for them to work with homeowners.
Apartments are getting cheaper to rent in Las Vegas, thanks to increased competition from the “shadow market” of single-family rental homes, a commercial broker said Tuesday.
Las Vegas is on pace for 40,000 existing-home sales and 5,000 new-home sales in 2009, but a second wave of foreclosures will continue to put downward pressure on pricing through the end of the year, housing analyst Larry Murphy said Thursday at his quarterly Crystal Ball seminar.
Mortgage modification and foreclosure consultants are showing little interest in complying with a new Nevada law that requires them to obtain licenses.
Nobody wants to take heat for declaring an end to the Las Vegas housing market downturn, but local analysts don’t see the market going much lower, especially in terms of prices.
PHOENIX — Each time Lance and Kelli Thorson thought they had found their first home, someone would outbid them. It’s already happened at least 15 times.
A few years ago, when 3,000 to 4,000 new homes were being sold monthly in Las Vegas, people were trampling each other to snap them up, camping for days to be first in line for new releases at some 500 subdivisions around the valley and pushing prices beyond reality.
U.S. foreclosure filings, with Clark County at the top of the list, hit a record in the first half of 2009, a sign that job losses and falling property prices deepened the housing recession, according to RealtyTrac Inc.
Fewer home sellers are reducing their prices in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Detroit, a sign that some depressed housing markets are beginning to see stabilization in pricing, an online real estate search site reported.
RENO — The Nevada attorney general’s office says loan modification scams are topping all cases of housing fraud in Nevada.
Maybe it’s the moratorium, maybe it’s the government bailout. Perhaps President Barack Obama’s loan modification program is starting to take hold.
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