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US home prices climb in April; 7 cities set new records

WASHINGTON — U.S. home prices scaled new heights in April, with seven cities — including Boston, Charlotte, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and Seattle — setting record highs.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index increased 5.4 percent in April compared with a year earlier, just a tick down from the 5.5 percent annual gain in March.

Home values are now just 9.6 percent below their peak nearly a decade ago, according to the report released Tuesday.

Las Vegas saw an annual gain of 5.7 percent from last April, putting it in the middle of the pack for growth.

Dennis Smith, president of Home Builders Research in Las Vegas, said that any positive growth is good for this market, which suffered more than other metros in the Great Recession.

“We have much more recovery to do than any other city in the country,” he said.

Smith said he wasn’t sure growing at the rate of cities like Portland or Seattle was a good thing for the Vegas market.

“We’ve been there, done that,” he said.

The median price for Las Vegas homes reached $315,000 in June 2006. In its latest report, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, said that the median price of existing single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada in May hit $229,250. The market’s bottom median price was $118,000, felt in January 2012.

Las Vegas - April 2016 home prices (Gabriel Utasi/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Shrinking inventories of homes for sale have boosted prices, while a healthy job market and historically low mortgage rates have kept demand from potential buyers strong during the spring months associated with the highest volume of sales.

The number of listings has fallen 5.7 percent from a year ago, the National Association of Realtors said last week.

Home prices rose in all 20 major housing markets, with double-digit annual increases in Portland and Seattle.

“While strong price growth in these markets should help increase inventory in the coming months, homes will be significantly less affordable for homebuyers than this time last year,” said Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist at the online real estate service Trulia.

In addition to the other five cities at record home values, Dallas and Denver, continue to be well above their historic peaks.

Overall home ownership rates have dropped near a 48-year low in the aftermath of the housing bust that began in 2007. But sales have improved as the broader economy has slowly healed.

Sales of existing homes improved 1.8 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.53 million, the best pace since February 2007, according to the Realtors.

Providing the foundation for much of that growth has been a solid 4.7 percent unemployment rate that points to a stable period for workers.

Rising prices have also been tempered by low mortgage rates that are holding monthly ownership costs in check.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.56 percent last week. That figure is down from 4.02 percent a year ago and the long-term average of 6 percent.

Review-Journal writer Blake Apgar contributed to this report.

Las Vegas - April 2016 home prices (Gabriel Utasi/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

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