Home sales in Southern Nevada remain low, but prices tick higher

Home prices in the Southern Nevada region ticked up slightly in May, but sales are still substantially down from 2022’s historic year coming out of the pandemic.

Las Vegas Realtors reported 3,000 existing homes, condos and townhomes sold this past month, which is a 20.3 percent drop in home sales compared with May of last year and a 19.6 percent drop for condos and townhomes respectively.

The total value of real estate sales in Southern Nevada also dropped. According to MLS data, the total value of homes sold in May was down 22.2 percent this year compared with May 2022, while the total value for condos and townhomes was down 24.1 percent.

LVR President Lee Barrett said it appears the bottom of the market has passed and there may be a “bouncing back” period upcoming, as home prices did tick up slightly again, with relatively similar stats compared with April of this year indicating a trend.

The median price for an existing single-family home sold in May of this year was $442,120, up 2.8 percent from April. But that was still down 8.3 percent from the record home price of $482,000 that was set in May of last year.

“Prices have now increased for a couple of months in a row heading into what is usually our strongest selling season,” Barrett said. He added that the sales pace in May equated to less than a two-month supply of properties available on the market and that last year at this time, Southern Nevada was facing even tighter inventory with about a one-month supply.

LVR also noted in its monthly report that home sales are on pace to come in lower than they were in 2022 when 35,584 total sales were reported. This followed a record year in 2021, when 50,010 sales of homes, townhomes and condos were reported.

That was the first time the LVR had ever reported more than 50,000 home sales in a year, topping the previous record set back in 2011 by close to 2,000 homes.

The investor boom in metro Las Vegas also seems to be over as sales plunged a dramatic 60 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, according to a report from Redfin, an online real estate brokerage. That was well above the 48.6 percent national average for metro areas.

MLS data also showed that 21.9 percent of all property sales in Southern Nevada were made with cash this past month, which is down from 33.6 percent one year ago.

This is also substantially below the historical record peak for the month of May, back in 2013 when 59.5 percent of all homes were purchased with cash.

The U.S. housing market has been on a roller-coaster ride since the start of the pandemic, which saw a buyer’s boom fueled by cheap money in 2021 that subsequently sent prices to record highs. Then Southern Nevada’s housing market came crashing down to earth in the second half of last year after rising interest rates led to a sharp jump in mortgage rates. This in turn forced buyers to pull back, sellers to slash prices and inventory jumped.

Nationally, Redfin reported that pending home sales dropped 17 percent from a year earlier for the four weeks ending May 28, also noting that homebuying demand dipped over May “due to elevated mortgage rates and a scarcity of homes for sale.”

Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com or 702-348-3967.