Las Vegas-area home sales and prices rose in the latest month tracked by real estate information service DataQuick.
Closed-escrow home sales in the Las Vegas-Paradise (Clark County) metro area in May jumped 6.1% to 4,829 from the month before. This represented a 5.7% increase for the month on a year-to-year basis and a high not seen during that month in six years.
The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in the Las Vegas metro area in May was $122,000, according to DataQuick.
The real estate information service said this was the highest median price paid for a home in the region since buyers paid $124,000 in December 2010. This was up 2.5% from $119,000 the prior month and 4.3% from $117,000 a year earlier.
Among recent developments affecting Vegas-area housing is a Nevada law that sets additional foreclosure restrictions on lenders, according to the real estate information service.
In the wake of this law, notices of default filed in Clark County have seen relative drops in recent months and continued to drop on a year-to-year basis in May.
Lenders filed 1,344 NODs during the month, down 66.9% from the same month a year ago, but up 5% from April.
When asked what the implications of the legislation and this trend are for area housing, DataQuick president John Walsh told this publication they are mixed.
“Legislation that artificially slows down the foreclosure process means it will take longer for distressed properties to get through the default, REO and REO liquidation process. The result is an increase in shadow inventory, and the market will not fully recover until the inventor is bled off,” he said. “On the positive side, a slower foreclosure process means fewer distressed sales hit the market, hence, there is less downward pressure on prices.
“In the short term—and short term, only—this will prevent prices from becoming less stable,” Walsh said. “However, a full recovery will take longer.”
