Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
StumbleTuesday
28 February 2012
1:02 p.m.
With supply still exceeding demand in December, Las Vegas-area home prices fell again to a new low during the current recession.
That’s according to debt-rating agency Standard & Poor’s, which on Tuesday issued its monthly S&P/Case-Shiller home price report covering 20 major U.S. markets.
Las Vegas prices in December fell 0.8 percent from November. And compared to December 2010, Las Vegas prices were down 8.8 percent, Standard & Poor’s said.
Of the 20 U.S. cities tracked by Standard & Poor’s, the average monthly decline in December was 1.1 percent while the average year-over-year decline was 4 percent.
Only Atlanta, with an annual decline of 12.8 percent, performed worse than Las Vegas in the year-over-year price change measurement.
Standard & Poor’s data show Las Vegas prices are now at January 1997 levels, a deterioration from November when they fell to February 1997 levels.
With unemployment locally running at 12.7 percent percent and Las Vegas No. 5 on the national foreclosure list,December represented the 11th consecutive month of home price declines in the Las Vegas area, and analysts are unsure when prices will rise on a sustained basis.
Standard & Poor’s bases its report on index levels as opposed to dollar amounts.
The most recent report covering actual dollar amounts from the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors found the median price of existing homes locally in January was $118,000, down 5.6 percent from January 2011.
The low prices have led to booming sales locally for real estate agents, with sales of homes, condominiums and townhomes in January totaling 3,591, up from 3,214 a year earlier.
Nationwide, Standard & Poor’s noted in Tuesday’s home price report, prices in December hit their lowest levels since the housing crisis began in mid-2006.
''In terms of prices, the housing market ended 2011 on a very disappointing note," David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices, said in a statement. "While we thought we saw some signs of stabilization in the middle of 2011, it appears that neither the economy nor consumer confidence was strong enough to move the market in a positive direction as the year ended.''
Share
Discussion 4 comments
Comments are moderated by VegasInc editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy.
Additionally, we now display comments from trusted commenters by default. Those wishing to become a trusted commenter need to verify their identity or sign in with Facebook Connect to tie their Facebook account to their VEGAS INC account. For more on this change, read our story about how it works and why we did it.
Only trusted comments are displayed on this page. Untrusted comments have expired from this story.
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.
If you have a LasVegasSun.com account, you are already registered.
Most Popular
- Viewed
- Discussed
- E-mailed
1997. Not a bad year, but this is 2012 and we owe it all to Harry the Red and Osama Obama. Thank you so much. Under their "guidance" and "leadership," we homeowners have been saved from disaster, haven't we? Not so much! It's gotten worse by the day and there's no relief in sight. Actually, there is. Get rid of Osama Obama in November. Get rid of his appetite for spending and deficits and his "crony capitalism" and watch things get better. Get rid of his czars and their mismanagemnt and interference in the business sector and our private lives and things will right themselves. Keep the cretin in office and, well, you'll have only yourself to blame as the recession deepens and the economy tanks even further.
I haven't heard a single plan from any of the republican nominees that would directly help our city with this issue. When times are tough, all people want to do is oust the leadership, only so the seats are refilled with a new face that they can blame for the next crisis. Efforts ARE being made by the current administration to improve the housing crisis but Vegas was hit so hard that we're going to over-correct before we stabilize.
Sheiep, your comment is about as creative as it gets. Why don't you enlighten your fellow Las Vegans as to those "efforts" that are being made to improve things. So far all you have seen is failure.
Maybe Colin will get in here. He still blames Bush. When you have a failed presidency all you have left are silly comment.
Does "over correct" mean more failure? That is really funny. Did you know for instance the R.E. market around the capital is really stable and, in fact, have not dropped appreciatively. I guess that means good old Harry "there is nothing wrong with social security" Reid is more interested in D.C. than in Nevada. No over correcting there.
The administration wants you to believe that unemployment is dropping and is now 8.3% while remaining at over 12% in Las Vegas. Only a difference of 50% increase.
Fortunately climbing gas prices do not affect inflation all that much. Bernake says inflation stays at 2%. Do you believe and liberals chide conservatives for their faith?
If things are improving then why is it that it feels like things are slowly getting worse?
The simple fact is the housing problem will get worse as the banks are sitting on large numbers of foreclosed homes that have yet to hit the market.
This so called settlement that the banks agreed to will just allow them to continue the foreclosure process without the government on their backs. I expect the home prices to decline another 3-6% this year.
acejoker: Making Homes Affordable Program, Foreclosure to Rental Program to name a couple off the top of my head.
In fact, the rest of the country's real estate market is more stable than we are, as they didn't have the inflation that we had. It's not just the capitol's (with an 'o'). It's simple to understand if you can view it as an economic issue rather than a 'liberals vs conservatives' view. And what does faith have to do with any of this, besides trying to stir the pot?