Crews work Wednesday on Wellington Place near Durango Drive and Restless Pines Street. New-home inventory stands at about 4,000 units either built or within 30 days of completion. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Larry Murphy keeps hearing all this talk about a housing "bubble" in Las Vegas and reads in Forbes magazine that houses are 30 percent overvalued here.

Forbes dropped Las Vegas from the 18th-most overvalued housing market in the nation to 28th, "so I guess we've improved," Murphy, president of SalesTraq, said Wednesday at his first-quarter Crystal Ball housing seminar.

Don't believe everything you hear and read.

"My daddy once told me when I was a kid that if 20 people tell you you have a tail, turn around and look," Murphy said.

Median new home prices increased 12.5 percent in March to an all-time high of $320,379, Murphy reported. Resale prices, which Forbes had predicted would drop 8.5 percent this year, are up 8.3 percent from last March at $284,900, though they've remained relatively flat over the past nine months.

Sales of new homes are ahead of last year by nearly 20 percent through the first three months and are on pace for a record 40,000. Existing home closings are about the same.

One number that has caught Murphy's attention is the record 16,201 homes for sale on the Multiple Listing Service. That's up from 10,288 a year ago.

Still, the current supply is about 5.2 months and the average home spends 54 days on the market, the same as a year ago. Murphy defines a "hot" market as one where houses sell in fewer than 60 days.

"It's not that bad. It's not that uncommon," he said. "We're still talking less than 60 days to get these sold."

Many experts like to look at the inventory and identify Las Vegas as a "buyer's market," but that term is overused and does not describe the situation well, Murphy said.

"A buyer's market says the buyer can command both incentives and lower prices from the seller. In this market, we are not seeing lower prices. And the incentives we see tend to be those you expect to remain competitive in a crowded market," he said. "So we don't think 'buyer's market' is the appropriate term. Frankly we prefer the term 'balanced.' Argue what you will, but if prices continue to rise, we can't be in a buyer's market."

New-home inventory stands at about 4,000 units either built or within 30 days of completion, not counting condominium conversions that are on the market. There are 517 new subdivisions in the valley, the highest number of subdivisions per capita in the world, but Murphy expects that number to drop to 475 by year's end.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the market and see we have a lot of inventory," he said. "I think we're at a peak right now. Home builders are offering $10,000 in incentives, so we've got a lot of inventory and a lot of incentives going on."

Tim Sullivan, a housing expert with San Diego-based Sullivan Group, said several factors are helping the Las Vegas housing market, including historically low interest rates, strong job growth and in-migration, particularly from California.

"As long as Southern California prices, particularly in Orange County, remain where they are, Las Vegas will remain a steal," Sullivan said.

People are leaving California because the cost of living is too high and it's too crowded, he said. There's been an exodus from coastal areas to more affordable markets.

"So that push from Southern California to Las Vegas will continue," he said.

Forbes not only showed Las Vegas overpriced by 30 percent, but Reno was 32 percent overpriced and Phoenix was 28 percent overpriced.

Murphy thinks the numbers came from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, a government source that tracks housing appreciation around the nation.

"All they (Forbes) did was look at what appreciation did historically in those markets and decided it must be overpriced," Murphy said. "But prices don't go up or down based on history. Prices go up or down based on supply and demand.

"What if gasoline reaches $4 a gallon this year? What are you going to do? I'll tell you what you'll do. You'll pay it. You may change your driving habits, but you'll pay it. What if the median price of a new home in Las Vegas reaches $400,000? What are you going to do? You'll pay it if you want to live in Las Vegas. Why don't I live in Newport Beach (Calif.)? Because I can't afford it."

Nationwide, housing starts and permits for March were below consensus expectations, said Stephen East, home building analyst for Susquehanna Financial Group in St. Louis.

However, the number that stands out the most to him is the large increase in year-to-year housing completions which, in the face of moderating demand, raises the specter of increasing inventories and decreasing prices.

Housing units completed were up 37.6 percent in the South and 9.8 percent in the West. Housing units under construction in those regions are up as well.

Permit data was more benign than starts, especially in light of upward revisions to the prior month's data, East said. March got a boost from the multifamily sector. The six-month average for total starts is still up 3.3 percent from a year ago.

"The latest numbers added to our concern over increased standing inventory in the face of more modest demand, and the likely downward effect that it could have on pricing for the builders," he said.