Las Vegas July Home Sales Plunge

LAS VEGAS (DQNews) -- The Las Vegas region logged its biggest year-over-year drop in home sales in more than two years last month as low mortgage rates failed to compensate for the weak economy and the fading influence of the federal home buyer tax credits. The median sale price fell from the prior month and a year ago to its lowest level since February, a real estate information service reported.



A total of 4,310 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the Las Vegas-Paradise metro area (Clark County) last month, down 22.2% from June and down 18.8% from a year earlier,according to MDA DataQuick. The San Diego firm tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records.

On average, the region's sales have fallen 8.1% between June and July since 1994, when DataQuick's complete Las Vegas region statistics begin. The 18.8% year-over-year decline in last month's sales was the largest for any month since April 2008, when overall sales dropped 19.7 from a year earlier.

Last month's sales tally was the lowest for a July since July 2008, when 4,134 homes sold, and it was 11.9% below average for the month since 1994.

Foreclosure resales - homes that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months - rose to 48.9% of all resales in July, up from 46.4% in June but down from a near-record 69.7% a year earlier. Up until last month, foreclosure resales had declined each month since they peaked at 73.7% of the resale market in April last year.

The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos sold in the Las Vegas metro area in July was $129,900, down 6.5% from $139,000 in June and down 0.1% from $130,000 a year earlier. Last month marked the first time the median had fallen on a month-to-month basis since January and the first time it fell year-over-year since March.

Last month's median was 58.4% below the peak $312,000 median in November 2006.

The median price paid for resale single-family detached houses - by far the region's largest home-type category - fell to $129,000, down 7.2% from $139,000 in June and down 4.5% from $135,100 a year earlier. The July resale house median was 58.7% lower than the peak $312,250 resale house median in July 2006.

The median price paid last month for resale condos was $71,000, down 1.4% from June but up 1.4% from $70,000 a year earlier. The resale condo median has been hovering a bit above or below $70,000 each month for more than a year. July's resale condo median stood 65.0% below its $203,000 peak in July 2006.

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