- Feb 25 ECRI's WLI at 42 Week High: 'Get While the Getting Is Good'
- Feb 13 How to Play Expected Inflation From the TIPS Spread
-------- Original Message --------
| Subject: | Las Vegas… "push the median sale price down to a nearly 15-year low of $118,000" |
|---|---|
| Date: | Sat, 26 Feb 2011 07:39:44 -0800 |
| From: | Jas Jain |
This is coming to a zip code near you when the economy can no longer be supported by artificial boost from the Feds (USG & Fed. Reserve). It would take another Scam Market crash for the ritzy areas in Silly.con Valley. Be patient, the prices in Palo Alto and Los Altos would be down more than 80% from the peak. I know that it is hard for Scam lovers to believe.
Jas
PS: Prices have hit new lows in 80% of the metros in the US. It is also true of the majority of zip codes in CA. This is despite a recovery in the economy and a big recovery in the Scam Market.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
http://www.dqnews.com/Articles/2011/News/Las-Vegas/RRCLNV110224.aspx
Las Vegas Metro Area January Home Sales
Las Vegas region January home sales fell as they normally do from December but rose nearly 10 percent above a year ago to the highest level for that month in four years. The portion of homes sold to investors and others paying cash was at record levels, creating especially robust sales in the sub-$100,000 market. That helped push the median sale price down to a nearly 15-year low of $118,000, a real estate information service reported.
A total of 3,669 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the Las Vegas-Paradise metro area (Clark County) last month – the highest for a January since 2007. Last month's sales tally was down 20.8 percent from December but up 9.9 percent from a year earlier, according to DataQuick Information Systems of San Diego. The firm tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records.
On average, the region's sales have fallen 24.2 percent between December and January since 1994, when DataQuick's complete Las Vegas region statistics begin.
January's sales total was 2.4 percent above the average for January sales since 1994. Last month's year-over-year sales increase was the first in seven months.
Sales of homes priced below $100,000 rose to 38.6 percent of all transactions last month, up from 36.6 percent in December and 35.1 percent a year ago. Last month's figure was the highest for sub-$100,000 sales since the housing downturn began.
And it's no wonder: Absentee buyers, which are mainly investors, purchased 49.2 percent of all Las Vegas–area homes sold in January – the highest level since at least 2000. Last month's figure was up from 45.9 percent in December and 43.0 percent a year ago. Absentee buyers paid a median $100,000 last month, down from $102,819 in December and $101,000 a year earlier.
Absentee buyers can include second-home purchasers and others who, for various reasons, indicate at the time of sale that the property tax bill will go to a different address.
Those who appear to have used cash to purchase their homes accounted for 54.5 percent of total January sales – the highest in DataQuick's Las Vegas statistics back to 1994. Last month's level of all-cash purchases was up from 50.6 percent in December and 50.4 percent a year ago. The median price paid in these cash deals was $92,250 last month, up a bit from $89,250 in December but down from $96,000 a year earlier.
Specifically, these all-cash deals were transactions where there was no indication of a purchase mortgage recorded at the time of sale. Some of these "cash" buyers could have used alternative financing arrangements outside of a typical, recorded purchase mortgage, and in some cases they might be taking out mortgages after their purchases. All-cash deals have become popular in markets where prices have dropped sharply, luring investor buyers who can't always qualify for traditional mortgages. Moreover, sellers favor the relative speed and certainty of all-cash transactions.
The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in the Las Vegas metro area last month fell to $118,000, down 4.8 percent from $124,000 in December and down 6.2 percent from $125,750 a year earlier. It was the fourth consecutive month in which the median fell year-over-year. Since the median hit a 2010 high of $139,000 last June, it has either declined or shown no change each month compared with a year earlier.
January's median was the lowest since it was also $118,000 in April 1996, and it was 62.2 percent below the peak $312,000 median in November 2006.
The median's recent decline to a nearly 15-year low can be attributed to several factors: price depreciation; robust sales of low-cost foreclosures; robust sales to investors, who mainly target low-cost properties; a hesitancy among potential buyers, who are waiting for clearer signs on the direction of the economy, home prices, and employment; lower-than-normal new-home sales (new homes tend to sell for more than resale homes); and higher-than-usual condo resales (condos tend to be the least expensive homes).
Sales of existing (not new) condos rose 20.6 percent last month from a year ago and represented a record 22.0 percent of all sales, compared with a 10-year average of 13.0 percent of sales. Last month's sales of newly built homes were the same as a year earlier but made up just 7.4 percent of total sales. That was the second-lowest level for any month in DataQuick's records and was well below the new-home market's historical monthly average of nearly 31 percent of all sales. Home builders have suffered amid the weak economy and competition from distressed sales.
The median price paid last month for resale single-family detached houses – the region's largest home-type category – was $125,000, down 3.8 percent from December and down 7.4 percent from $135,000 a year earlier. Last month's resale house median stood 60.0 percent below its peak of $312,250 in June 2006.
The median price paid for resale condos last month was $66,950, up 6.8 percent from December but down 3.0 percent from a year earlier. January's resale condo median was 67.0 percent below its $203,000 peak in July 2006.
An alternative price gauge – the median paid per square foot for resale single-family detached houses – dropped to $70 last month, which was the lowest since it was also $70 in April 1995. January's median paid per square foot was down 2.8 percent from December and down 7.9 percent from a year earlier, marking the fourth consecutive month to post a year-over-year decline. January's figure was 63.2 percent below the peak $190 paid per square foot in May and June of 2006.
Foreclosure resales – homes that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months – dipped slightly to 54.7 percent of the Las Vegas resale market last month. That was down from 56.3 percent in December and down from 62.0 percent a year earlier. Foreclosure resales peaked at 73.7 percent of the resale market in April 2009.
The number of homes foreclosed on in the Las Vegas region last month rose from both December and a year earlier. Lenders foreclosed on 2,658 single-family house and condo units in January, up 18.0 percent from December and up 59.4 percent from January 2010. The peak month was February 2009, which saw 3,718 foreclosures. The figures are based on the number of Trustees Deeds filed at the county recorder's office.
The foreclosure totals can include units that the county assessor has designated condos, but are currently used as apartments (e.g. a 100-unit complex designated as condos but used as apartments could be foreclosed on and those units would be reflected in the foreclosure total for that month). For this reason and others, the number of foreclosure filings has seesawed, and a single month's increase or decline doesn't necessarily indicate a new trend.
In January, a popular form of low-down-payment financing for first-time home buyers – government-insured FHA loans – accounted for 40.2 percent of all home purchase loans. That was down from 42.2 percent in December and down from 49.0 percent a year earlier.
Last month 4.4 percent of the homes sold had been "flipped," meaning they had sold twice on the open market in a six-month period. That was up from a flipping rate of 3.4 percent in December but down from 5.0 percent a year earlier. The region's flipping rate peaked in September 2004 at 8.9 percent.
Las Vegas-Paradise, NV
| Number of sales | Jan-10 | Dec-10 | Jan-11 | YOY %Chng |
| Resale houses | 2,417 | 3,252 | 2,610 | 8.00% |
| Resale condos | 675 | 972 | 814 | 20.60% |
| New homes | 275 | 445 | 275 | 0.00% |
| All homes | 3,367 | 4,669 | 3,699 | 9.90% |
| | | | | |
| Median sale price | Jan-10 | Dec-10 | Jan-11 | YOY %Chng |
| Resale houses | $135,000 | $130,000 | $125,000 | -7.40% |
| Resale condos | $69,000 | $62,700 | $66,950 | -3.00% |
| New homes | $201,515 | $206,476 | $207,000 | 2.70% |
| All homes | $125,750 | $124,000 | $118,000 | -6.20% |
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment