Las Vegas Sun NewsLas Vegas home prices hit new post-recession low
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A home sits foreclosed and unoccupied in the 4500 block of East Sun Valley Drive on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011.
Tuesday
24 April 2012
9 a.m.
Las Vegas-area home prices fell from January to February, according to the closely-followed Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.
S&P on Tuesday said Las Vegas was among nine big U.S. markets to see prices hit new post-recession lows in February, as the larger U.S. market continued to struggle.
Las Vegas prices fell 0.4 percent on a monthly basis and were down 8.5 percent from February 2011, S&P said.
The declines compare to 0.8 percent on a monthly basis for the 20 big U.S. markets tracked by S&P/Case-Shiller; and a 3.5 percent year-over-year decline for the 20 markets.
With Las Vegas ranking No. 8 in the nation for foreclosures and unemployment elevated at 12.1 percent, the local residential real estate market has remained stuborningly weak through the recession.
Local data for March from analytical firm SalesTraq showed that — amid indications of tightening supply — Las Vegas-area median existing home prices rose from $100,800 in February to $103,000 in March.
Still, that’s down 4.3 percent below March 2011.
SalesTraq reported that in the Las Vegas new home market, closings increased from 288 in February to 352 in March. The median new home price of $201,668 was up from $195,250 in February and was up 1.6 percent from March 2011.
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Acejoker
Come back to the home it's time for your milk and cookies
Jim, the only people that are going to take what you wrote to heart are your fellow right-wing nuts. Rational people are just going to see your post for what it is.
The housing crisis was more than a decade in the making, and covered a few administrations. Think about it...Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall, Bush kept interest rates at zero to "stimulate" the economy after 9/11, and Obama, despite having a bi-partisan group's recommendation and control of both houses, failed to reinstate Glass-Steagall (or the "Volcker Rule", as it's now called). None of the above had the courage to do the right thing, and go against the banks.
These ridiculous comments without any substance are extremely annoying.
Could it be that the lack of Planning by Nevada Politicians over the Past 30 Years to diversify the Economy is the Real Problem, instead of a President whose every Policy initiative is blocked by Republicans for THREE Years? Could it be that a State that has less high level Educational Options than Mississippi and can not attract Businessess that rely on an educated Workforce. Could it be that a City with the worst Hospital Care system in the U.S. is unable to attract the right mix of educated Retirees and Families. Could it be that a City that has a 50% Graduation Rate could not be taken serious in any Job Creation other than low wage, part time, service sector industries.
All of these Locally self-inflicted wounds have been brought to you by an Ignorant Population and Lazy (at best) Politicians over decades.
Yet to listen to the Whining Right Wingers - It's ALL President Obamas Fault! The other Day I was at the Post office in a line with a Window not filled - I wondered where President Obama was instead of taking care of my letter.
As a Real Estate agent that works with investors, buying and selling, I can tell you that part of the problem has been appraisals. I have been getting contracts at full price only to find appraisers coming in very low. Market value is what a buyer is willing and does pay for a property. But when an appraiser comes in low, the contract often times must be renegotiated to a lower price. They base their values on historical data vs. real time market conditions. The market is definitely tightening up. Distressed properties that sat on the market are now receiving multiple offers. For the market to make an upward turn, buyers need to begin paying higher prices. It's econ 101.
Tina
I have been trying to buy a house for months...everything I see has "contingent offer" on it and sits for months with no action.
What's going on?
Tina,
you are right, the appraisal process has been a major nightmare in getting deals done but it goes both ways, under and overappraised. My house was overappraised by 50 K because I lived in 7 hills as compared to lower in the valley. Overappraisal will make all short sales fail as the bank turns away all potential buyers on short sales and refuses to negotiate reasonable offers. This has also been a nightmare for people trying to refinance. No one knows what these houses are worth anymore.
BTW I now live in Connecticut and B of A has keys to my house.
Furthermore what I don't get is how every realtor I contacted and dealt with was in the same ballpark with the house market value and 2 different appraisers where both 50K higher. ???
Tina: That was the problem back in the boom and why appraisers wont do it. They appraised on real time market conditions that got out of control on the upward side. Now they are driving prices down because of the opposite. Apprasing is an out of date archaic system. Let people pay what they want and let the bank approve their ability to pay that amount. forget what the appraiser thinks it is worth. Buyers cannot pay higher prices if banks wont loan it based on low appraisals. And as a result the Vegas market will never recover and no one will move up because they wont be able to sell their houses to do so.
Decades of experience has taught me that the popular concept of Econ 101 is wrong. Properties were very overvalued for a very long time.Appraisals magically came in at asking price most of the time, that's not economics, that's BS. I have seen the market for decades through the eyes of buyers, sellers, owner/brokers, agents, etc. and anyone with honest experienced perspective would agree that for example: When an 800 sq. ft duplex built in the late 60s; a fixer upper that needs a new roof, flooring, exterior doors repaired, has kitchen plumbing on the outside of the exterior wall and needs these things NOW sells for $389,000., things have outstripped reason. The market overheated due to risky financing, greedy buyers, sellers, agents and lenders.
Now that appraisers are being watched rather than ignored, lenders are requiring more than a pulse to write a loan and buyers are beginning to look for that word that agents hate - value, things are becoming more realistic. Prices don't need to come up yet, we're no where near that point yet. I know that angers those whose homes are under water and sellers who think their home is worth more (they always do). It will take time. If it happens overnight it will be another problem to deal with.
The big question now is whether our politicians will let tax assessments reach true value too or be pressured into taking what they can get to pay for the years of over the top spending.
As a real estate investor I can say one thing for certain: the opinions of Real Estate agents on the issue of prices in the real estate market are absolutely worthless.
@acejoker, I agree that the Obama administration's cynical and timid attempts to ameliorate the housing debacle (Bush's Bubble) has been shameful, but the overall affect of the doing-nothing-policies in effect, is in effect the exact prescription Mitt Romney proposed, " let them (housing prices) hit bottom." Obviously the, "trillions of... misused and stolen...money," is not, "beyond," your, "ability to imagine"! Fact: President Bush took a budget surplus and turned it into a budget deficit, waged two unfunded wars, enacted an unfunded medicare partD program; and compounded by the job and revenue losses created by the Great Recession (Bush's Great Recession), devastated the governments' income stream. President Obama's inheritance was indeed mean (poor in quality). It was either the GAO or the CBO that reported that the (overhyped) stimulus (and pay attention to the wording) created or saved up to 3.5 million jobs; it also cushioned and lessened the collapse of state governments. Saving GM and Dodge saved the U.S. car manufacturing industry, because of the compound effect of the myriad of ancillary automobile suppliers, which would have affected Ford and the foreign car makers in the U.S. And while not enough and up and down in number, there has been at least 24 consecutive months of job growth under President Obama. I don't like the ACA (Romneycare), I didn't agree with the Afghan surge, and Wall Street is pretty much now as it was at the fall (shameful), but this country was wrecked (few deserve no blame, some deserve much) when President Obama was sworn in to office; and yes, today things are better although precarious than things were in January 2009. "...then nothing that can be reported will affect the faithful," sounds like the pot calling the kettle black, just sayin'. peace, out.
First, Jim. That has so very little to do with this article. Your die-hard allegiance to your political affiliation is showing.
To those who say the market is "tightening up", You must not be paying attention to the houses that the banks are holding on to, or to the houses that are defaulting as we speak. This will be the status quo for quite some time, regardless of how many investors buy into it.
You have millions of Americans with bad credit because of foreclosures & short sales. Many of these people still have good jobs, but no longer qualify to buy a house and won't for a few years. The jobs just aren't there for first time buyers either, so all that is left are investors and they can only buy so many houses. Housing prices in Vegas are not going up for a long long time. Plus, more foreclosures will be coming along soon. The banks and government haven't really helped anyone...oh yeah, the government did bail out the banks who should have gone bankrupt. In the end, the home owner paid for the bank's bailout, now the home owners's who foreclosed and short sold have bad credit, but the banks have great credit. lol. What a system. The only way out of this mess is to loosen up the credit requirements and let people start buying houses again. If the government can bailout a bankrupt bank and let them lend again, then they can let people that were foreclosed on buy a house again.
We all owe Osama Obama a debt of gratitude for his excellent handling of the economy over the past 3+ years. That is, if we are among Osama Obama's and his fellow travelers favorites. They're making out like bandits. The rest of us? Not so much! Handouts, bailouts, record deficits and record unemployment figures are hallmarks of Osama Obama's mishandling of the economy. And, why not? He's as ignorant a fool when it comes to economics as we've had in the Oval Office since the peanut farmer. "Crony capitalism" is the word of the day with this "administration. But we can and, hopefully, will change that come November when we toss him and his motley crew out on their behinds! Vote Mitt!
Garbage in, garbage out. This is one more indiscriminant and misleading article bemoaning market realities in the service of politicians, realtors and property owners, who have a skewed view of their property value. In fact, the situation is far worse than portrayed and prices are likely to drop drastically in the future, because:
1. Politicians buy elections and job security for themselves by subsidizing home prices with our money. Among their tools:
a. Loans with minimal down
b. Government-backed loans (now more than 90% of all home loans). Would any of us be stupid enough to give a 97% loan to a stranger who has just 3% skin in?
c. Tax rules which reward borrowers and penalize savers
d. Deficit spending equivalent to 10% of annual GNP
e. Total debt exceeding 100% of GNP
f. Borrowing (stealing) from the Chinese who actually work to produce things people want to buy and who actually save money in spite of receiving a fraction of the wages received by the thieves (i.e., Americans)
g. Basing the economy on a single export--fresh-minted dollar bills, which the American government/military forces down the throats of "foreigners".
2. Included in the calculations are the phony high prices into which realtors con their buyers.
3. Few Americans are truly "homeowners". A more accurate picture of values would emerge if statistics were based on the prices paid by true "homebuyers" (i.e., cash buyers). This would unmask the criminal nature of the statistics foisted on the public for the purpose of propping up our corrupt one-party--Demopublican--system.
4. Nearly 100,000 fewer people are gainfully employed today in Las Vegas than in 2007 (when the housing was built), so the true number of vacant units will exceed 50,000 until government policy changes radically and foreigners (who possess real wealth) are allowed to visit Las Vegas and create jobs.
5. The prices quoted don't account for inflation. E.g., last year's prices equaled those of 1999--yet the value of today's dollar is 30% less.
6. Property taxes (thanks to our corrupt and greedy government which thinks it is fine for its employees to receive 3-10 times the lifetime compensation we receive) have increased since 1999 (even though the value is equivalent). Worse, a system is in place to increase taxes if prices ever do increase. This will drag prices.
7. Everything government does costs us more every year--even though we our income and assets are rapidly diminishing.
8. The April 1 government water increase wiped out billions of dollars in private property values--just so Pat Mulroy could borrow $300,000,000 to forestall the bankruptcy into which she has thrust SNWA and LVVWD.
9. That increase is just one of dozens imposed by the government on its citizens. These will impose a permanent drag on housing prices and our welfare.
Prices are not "stubbornly weak" and the worst is yet to come, thanks in part to you, Mr. Green.