Las Vegas Home Sales Rise in October

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

LA JOLLA, Calif. (DQNews) -- Sales of existing Las Vegas-area homes rose year over year for the tenth consecutive month in October, while prices edged lower.

The combination of super-low mortgage rates and continued price erosion kept investor and first-time-buyer interest high, triggering a 33% annual gain in the number of sales below $100,000, a real estate information service reported.

In October, 4,595 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the Las Vegas-Paradise metro area (Clark County). That was down 2% from September but up 15.3% from October 2010, according to San Diego-based DataQuick. The firm tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records.

A dip in sales between September and October is not unusual. On average, sales have fallen 2.4% between those two months since 1994, when DataQuick's complete Las Vegas region statistics begin.

Last month marked the fourth in a row to record a year-over-year gain in total sales and the tenth in a row to log an annual increase for resales (excludes new homes). Last month's sales of newly-built homes rose sharply -- 31.8% -- from a year earlier but were still the second-lowest on record for an October.

October sales were most robust in the lower price ranges. The total number of transactions below $100,000 climbed 33.2% from a year earlier and made up 41.3% of all deals, compared with 34.8% of all sales a year ago. The number of sales below $200,000 last month rose 18.2% year over year and the number above $300,000 fell 4.4% from a year earlier.

This year's big sales gain for lower-cost homes has put 2011 on track to have the highest level of resale activity in six years. The number of houses and condos that resold between January and October this year totaled 41,662, up 8.4% from last year and the highest since 2005, when 52,166 homes resold during that 10-month period. Overall sales (including new homes) totaled 46,120 during the first 10 months of this year, up 6.5% from last year and the highest since 2006.