Home sales continue strong in Southern Nevada, report says

Southern Nevada homebuilders continue to sell more houses than last year, and even though prices have dropped in recent months, they remain up from a year ago, a new report says.

Builders closed 756 new-home sales in Clark County in August, bringing the year’s tally to 4,571. That’s up 11.6 percent from the same eight-month period last year, according to Home Builders Research.

The median sales price of August’s closings was $312,898, the lowest monthly median since March but up 2.5 percent from a year ago.

Meanwhile, builders also pulled 634 new-home permits last month, putting this year’s tally at 6,087, up 11.5 percent from the same period last year, the report said.

The rise in permits is “amazingly balanced” with the increase in home sales, which “certainly suggests there is no sign of overbuilding new homes in Las Vegas,” Home Builders Research founder Dennis Smith said in the report.

He also reported that, over the past few months, he had received more requests to produce studies on some of Las Vegas’ outlying towns. Smith said he provided many of these kinds of reports prior to the housing market’s crash.

During the boom years last decade, developers gobbled up land in small communities like Pahrump, Mesquite and Logandale. They planned to build lower-priced homes for Las Vegas commuters, but many of the projects went bust or never got off the drawing board.

Today, Smith said, some people are returning to see if there is “enough demand” for new homes in these towns, several of which “still have a huge supply of excess lots” that “linger from the overzealous pre-recession era.”

In most cases, he added, demand for suburban-style housing tracts “hasn’t materialized yet,” but “there could be something” built that would lure buyers and spark construction.