Las Vegas Home Inventory Climbs 71%
The Las Vegas Sun reports that prices are still going up in strong double digits. "Statistics released this week by the NAR showed the median home price in the Las Vegas area rose to $291,000 in the first quarter, an increase of 29.4 percent over the same period a year ago."
But the inventory is growing. "Analysts say existing homes have seen relatively small price increases, about 4 to 6 percent since January, because of market saturation. The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors had 14,830 single-family homes listed in April, up 71.4 percent from the same month a year ago. The association also had 2,676 condo and townhouse units listed last month, up 53.2 percent from April 2004."
Four percent in three months is still bubble territory. Is it a surprise with talk like this? "Lee Barrett, realtor said, "Las Vegas doubles in size every 10 years, and the market's performance is a combination of that population growth and the fact that we became an area where investors saw good opportunities in our community."
This chart of Harrah's and Pulte Homes suggests these 'investors' may want to take some chips off the table.
7 Comments:
who cares about year over year... of course, it's going to be higher than last year's... the top was last june/july... as soon as those summer months roll around, there's going to be no gain... and people will freak out...
Apparently, people are already freaking out in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas will be the New Capital of our ClusterFucked Nation. It will combine the worst of the Housing Bubble, Suburban Sprawl
and Peak Oil energy price inflation.
See
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/
"Las Vegas will be the New Capital of our ClusterFucked Nation. It will combine the worst of the Housing Bubble, Suburban Sprawl
and Peak Oil energy price inflation. "
Plus a miserable a/c dependent environment.
Plus the casino temptation.
I expect a spike in high-stakes gambling activity by some 'investors' as the bubble starts down.
Remember the good old days, when most of the high stakes gambling in Vegas took place on the Strip?
Yeah, when the RE bubble bursts and Peak OIL hits and nobody flies to Vegas because they "ain't gots no muny" and can not afford the ticket, these clowns will be praying for the Feds to reopen Yucca Mountain. Cause dumping the rest of the country's nuclear waste will be only thing Nevada will be good for.
("Lee Barrett, realtor said, "Las Vegas doubles in size every 10 years")
Don't think this guy has a Masters in Statistics. More likely a Masters in the Obvious. Here's a logic problem:
Boomtown doubled in population from 1980 to 1990. Boomtown doubled in population from 1990 to 2000. From 2000 to 2010, will the population of Boomtown:
a) double
b) triple
c) stay the same
d) impossible to know given the information provided
Of course, the answer is "D". I agree that LV is something of a special case. In large part, real estate has increased in value there because population growth has been strong. But with population growth comes new supply and sometimes oversupply---at least for a period of time.
If the price gains were limited to LV, you could make the case for a localized boom or even bubble attributable to dramatically improving fundamentals. But what then to make of a city like Minneapolis which has seen property double in the past 6-7 years even though population growth is under 3%? You can add dozens of other cities to this category.
Extrapolating the future based on the recent past is human nature, but it is faulty logic.
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