Nevada Residential Analysis - Residential Resources, Inc.

Las Vegas, Nevada

An analysis of the residential sale market relying mainly on MLS statistics for the Las Vegas/Clark County area and for the Reno/Sparks metro area.

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Las Vegas MLS Stats - Week Ended 5/17/2009

Posted at Nevada Residential Analysis - Residential Resources, Inc. by Frank Nason

May. 18, 2009

For the week just ended (May 17, 2009) there were 27,926 listings on the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors (GLVAR) Multiple Listing Service (MLS); down just 0.2% from last week. The decline in the single family category was offset by the rise in, especially, condo and to a lesser extent townhouse listings. The supply of single family homes on the market is now standing at 22,0424. Of those 13,465 or 61% are vacant – down from the peak of 65% vacant at the beginning of the year. There are 4,243 condominiums listed for sale with slightly less than 69% vacant; and 67% of the 1,641 townhouses listed are vacant.

As of 9:00 a.m. the system had reported a strong 535 single family closings for the week. Based upon a 4-week moving average of closings there are now a little more than 12 months supply of all product types listed for sale.

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If you take the single family listings and remove the 3,468 pending transactions and the 6,497 contingent (inspections, short sale approval, financing, etc.) transactions there are 8.1 months of single family inventory on the market. Since spiking earlier in the year the trend in supply has been down and is a good sign the market appears to be returning to the normal cycle of strong 1^st and 2^nd quarter sales. The number of properties under contract is also increasing by healthy numbers.

Short Sale/REO Listings

For the week ended May 17: There are 10,563 listings identified as short sales and 10,001 listings that are characterized as bank owned or REO (real estate owned).This reduction in REO listings is a healthy indicator, however, since the percentage of all successful short sale closing transactions has been decreasing while the percentage of short sale listings has been increasing this decrease in REO listings seems to be a short term phenomenon as the unsuccessful short sale listings turn into foreclosed properties.

Slightly more than 41% of the short sale listings are under contract while slightly less than 64% of the REO listings are under contract. Yet Short Sale listings account for 48% of all MLS listings and still account for (it varies month to month) less than 10% of all closings each month. It probably sounds like a broken record (to date myself with such a metaphor) but if the financial institutions cannot figure out how to increase the percentage of successful short sales then this Las Vegas market is destined to be mired in a continuing supply of foreclosures for quite some time.