Las Vegas has cratered? Well Sometimes not...

[B]Let us try a different example.[/B]

There is much lamentation of the Las Vegas RE market. And it is bad on the seller side. But let us look at a zip code that represents the more normal sort of Las Vegas neighborhood. 89134 is the oldest section of Summerlin. It has a total of 10,321 single family homes. It was pretty much built out around 2004 so it is relatively new...everything built since 1988 but little after 2004. Around half are senior housing.

It is highly owner occupied. Just a little over 90% of its homes are taxed to the property address.

[B]How hard was it hit?[/B]

At present 74 homes are bank owned. That is about 0.7%. Of these 34 have not yet been listed and 40 are in the sales process. 29 are actively for sale and 11 are in a pending sale status. In the third quarter 34 REPOs sold. So there is less than a three month inventory of REPOs.

So you put it all together and it turns out that the foreclosure mess has had a very low impact on 89134. Less than 1% of the homes are bank owned and those sell readily after foreclosure.

[B]So 89134 is not hurting? [/B]

Well that goes too far. First off average price year over year is down about 43%. However the median price is down about 19%. There are two things going on... a large price drop and a shift to a smaller sized home. Or the other way...big homes sell hard.

So median sized home price is down around 20% and sales are slow. While REPOs show a 3 month inventory that for non-distressed is about 8 months. Short sales continue to be a loser with about 2 years of inventory.

[B]So if you are going to move into well established Summerlin? [/B]

You can buy at around a 20% discount from a year ago or hunt for a relatively rare REPO and get 35% or so off.

[B]And if you want to sell in older Summerlin?[/B]

Lease it and wait a few years or expect a long sale cycle. Plan on a year at this point.