Las Vegas Housing Market Rebounds: Home Sales Increase 19th Month, Prices Rise, Foreclosures Fall

Highlights from the DQNews report on Las Vegas home sales in March:

1. A total of 4,328 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the Las Vegas metro area last month, up 31.9 percent from February and up 12.7 percent from a year earlier.

2. March’s sales total was the highest for that month since March 2006, when 8,486 homes sold, and it was 0.8 percent lower than the average March sales tally back to 1994. Last month marked the 19th in a row in which total sales rose on a year-over-year basis.

3. The number of houses and condos that resold (excludes new homes) in March rose to 4,334, up 30.9 percent from February and up 12.3 percent from a year earlier to the highest point since 4,721 resales in March 2006. Resales have risen on a year-over-year basis for 23 straight months.

4. Foreclosure resales – homes that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months – fell to 55.5 percent of all resales in March, down from 59.6 percent in February and down from 73.1 percent a year ago.

5. The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in the Las Vegas metro area in March was $130,000, up 3.0 percent from $126,197 in February but down 10.3 percent from $144,900 a year earlier (see chart above). The year-over-year decline was the smallest since October 2007, when the median dropped 9.2 percent from a year earlier, to $279,790.

6. For the first quarter of this year (January through March), foreclosures totaled 5,611, down 26.4 percent from the prior quarter and down 36.3 percent from a year ago.