Las Vegas-area new homes continued to sell at a slow pace and at lower prices in October, and local analyst Dennis Smith said the market was many months away from a turnaround.
Smith, owner of Home Builders Research Inc., reported Thursday there were 367 new home sales locally in October. That’s down from 405 sales in September but was an improvement from 325 sales in October 2010.
The year-to-year improvement isn’t much to cheer about, as the 2010 number compared to sales locally of 475 in October 2009.
During the economic boom in 2005 and 2006, sales locally topped 3,300 in some months and prices peaked at a median of $355,435.
Smith reported the median price in October was $196,360, a year-to-year decrease of more than $16,000, or 7.6 percent.
“The most recent housing numbers certainly suggest we are still many months from what we would consider being the end of our area’s housing recession (depression),” Smith commented in his latest local new home market report.
The 367 new home closings locally in October lifted the annual total to 3,155 — a decline of 1,440, or 31 percent, compared to the same period of 2010. The 2010 numbers were boosted by a temporary tax credit.
In a community with a 13.6 percent unemployment rate and a market flooded with foreclosed homes that compete with new homes, Smith commented that besides government efforts to stabilize existing home prices, the real solution to problems facing homebuilders would be job growth.
“Putting folks back to work will eventually take care of the housing recession. Unfortunately, there currently are no major announced (major development) projects that are financed and a ‘done deal,’” he said in his report.