Las Vegas Year-To-Date Real Estate Sales Up 99% From Last Year

GLVAR has released the sales totals for April 2009 and the numbers show a continued strong increase in sales volumes. The final ‘official’ SFR sales total for April 2009 is reported as 3,198 SFR units. This is a 7.3 % increase from March of this year and a 43.9 % increase from April, 2008’s closings of 1,794 units.

Year to date for 2009, Realtors have closed escrow on 10,690 SFR units. At this point last year, 2008, the cumulative SFR total for the first four months was 5,353 units which places this year at a 99.7% increase over the 2008 YTD closed volume.

Both charts are clickable if you really want to study them, and I present them for the few readers who like statistics and have asked for real numbers. Everyone else seems to be content with my anecdotal evidence of a rebounding market. Now if we can just get the banks to stop putting out the ridiculously low (even for this market) prices, then we’ll start to see increasing prices. Next months closings, where just about everything will close at HIGHER than the list prices should help on the price front. The buyer’s don’t want to hear about higher prices coming, but the current homeowners certainly do.

As I’ve been saying for the last couple of years, the REAL foreclosure crisis was a suburban thing. The inventory in the historic neighborhoods that we cover is actually much too low for the volume of activity. We’re the only part of town that is ANXIOUSLY awaiting release of the “shadow” inventory that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac have been sitting on for the last 6 months.