Buyers keep pulling back from new houses in Las Vegas

Las Vegas’ homebuilding market pumped the brakes yet again last month.

Builders landed 510 net home sales — newly signed sales contracts minus cancellations — in Southern Nevada in September, down 37 percent from the same month last year, according to a new report from Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research.

Amid the slowdown in sales, builders also cut back on their construction plans: They pulled 579 new-home permits last month, down 33 percent from September of last year.

Overall, builders closed 829 home sales last month, down 19 percent from a year earlier.

After a buyer signs a sales contract with a builder, it can take several months before construction of the house is finished and the sale closes.

Buyers paid a median price of $529,140 last month for newly built homes, up almost 4 percent year-over-year, Home Builders Research President Andrew Smith reported.

He also noted that builders continue to slowly raise their base prices.

Mortgage rates have largely pushed lower in recent months, giving homebuyers in Las Vegas and around the country some relief on borrowing costs. But rates are still elevated compared with what buyers have faced over the past 15 years, and home prices have stayed high in Southern Nevada, making it difficult for many would-be buyers to afford a place.

All told, the recent declines in mortgage rates have been an “encouraging sign for affordability conditions” across the country, but the market “remains challenging,” said Buddy Hughes, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, in a recent statement.

As he put it, most buyers are “still on the sidelines, waiting for mortgage rates to move lower.”

Locally, builders closed 7,653 home sales this year through September, down 17 percent from the same nine-month period last year, according to Home Builders Research.

On the resale side in Southern Nevada, sales totals last month were up from a year earlier amid a dip in prices.

Buyers picked up 1,884 previously owned single-family homes in September, up 5.2 percent from the same month last year, and they paid a median price of $470,000, down 2.1 percent from a year earlier, according to trade association Las Vegas Realtors.

Las Vegas’ all-time high median, $485,000, was reached several times this year, the group noted.

Listing site Redfin reported Thursday that the daily average mortgage rate was near its lowest level in three years but that buyers remain wary.

It said that mortgage rates are sliding amid economic uncertainty and political tensions, forces that are also making some house hunters “uneasy about making a major purchase.”

Buyers also face “stubbornly high prices,” the firm noted.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.