Las Vegas Metro Weekly Market Statistics - Week Ended September 12, 2009
For the week just ended (September 13, 2009) there were 26,774 listings on the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors (GLVAR) Multiple Listing Service (MLS). After peaking the end of March there was a steady decline in total listings until the end of July but has been up & down slightly since then. There was a slight increase in the number of single family listings.
The supply of single family homes on the market is now standing at 21,129. Of those 12,187 or 58% are vacant. The percentage of vacancies is about where it was a year ago. If the cycle repeats itself and the supply of REOs increases the percentage of vacant properties could get back to the mid-60% range. If the number of Short Sale listings continues to increase we could see those mid-60% numbers rise into the 70% range or higher. One odd note here is that in the past short sale listings tended to have a greater vacancy rate than ‘normal’ listings but recently that trend has reversed – I do not have an answer, just noting an oddity.
There are 4,043 condominiums listed for sale with 66% vacant; and approximately 65% of the 1,602 townhouses listed are vacant.
As of 3:00 p.m. on Monday 9/14 the system had reported a 425 single family closings. That is the fewest weeks closings since early March. Based upon a 4-week moving average of closings there are now 14.7 months supply of all product types listed for sale.
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If you take the 21,129 single family listings and remove the 2,945 pending transactions but not the 8,668 contingent transactions there are 6.8 months of single family inventory on the market using an 8-week average of closed escrows. Of those 8,668 Contingent sales 67.8% are Short Sale listings and that is why we continue to count them in total supply as it is unlikely that more than 10% or 15% will successfully gain lender approval before the foreclosure department takes over –at least unless the financial institutions gain some traction in processing the ever increasing supply of short sales.
Short Sale/REO Listings
For the week ended September 13: There are now 12,724 listings identified as short sales and 7,313 listings that are characterized as REO (real estate owned).This continues the trend of decreasing percentage of REO and increasing percentage of short sale.
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Of the 5,825 single family residential REO listings 68% are under contract. For short sale SFR listings 64% are currently under contract. Of the 425 SFR closings for the week 67% were bank owned – a percentage that had remained fairly constant but is now down for the last month.
What to Expect?
I anticipate we will look at the last week of July as the peak in closed escrows for the year. Otherwise this market is an enigma. According to the Clark County assessor’s office the number of properties acquired through Trustee Deed sales declined 21% from July to August. For the year there have been 10,050 single family properties acquired via Trustee Deed sale versus 15,197 already-foreclosed properties sold by the ‘banks’.
Expect inventory to increase. I thought the supply of short sale listings would start to decrease while the supply of REO listings would increase by now but this has not occurred and the percentage of short sale listings continues to climb.