Las Vegas Sees Home Prices Rise in June as Supply Tightens

While home prices in Las Vegas saw an increase in June, the ""Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors"":http://www.lasvegasrealtor.com/ (GLVAR) is wondering if the boost is just the result of a temporary effect of tight supply.

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The organization released statistics Tuesday indicating that existing home prices in June increased for the fifth straight month as the supply of local homes for sale tightened more.

""We haven't seen local home prices go up for this long since 2004,"" said GLVAR president Kolleen Kelley. ""Banks are putting far fewer homes on the market than they did in past years. This is leading to a very tight housing supply that is pushing up prices-at least for now. Only time will tell if these recent price increases prove to be somewhat artificial. I think it depends largely on how banks handle the mortgage defaults in their portfolios.""

Home sales also fell with the dropping number of homes available. According to GLVAR, 3,945 homes, condominiums, and townhomes sold in the area in June. That's a decrease from 4,134 in May and a year-over-year slide down from 4,540.

Compared to May's numbers, single-family home sales in June decreased by 5.8 percent, while condo and townhome sales increased by 1.4 percent. Year-over-year, both sales were down 11.4 percent and 19.8 percent, respectively.

Although there was a drop in home sales in June, Kelley said existing home sales are still ahead of the record pace set last year, when GLVAR reported sales of 48,186 existing properties in Southern Nevada.

The organization reported the median price of single-family homes sold in June was $131,785, an increase of 3 percent from $128,000 in May and a year-over-year increase of 5.9 percent. This increase also marked the fifth consecutive monthly gain, the first time such a streak has occurred since July 2004.

The median price of local condos and townhomes sold in June was $69,000, up 11.3 percent from $62,000 in May and up 15.2 percent from June 2011.

According to GLVAR's statistics, the total number of homes listed for sale on its MLS decreased from May to June, with a total of 16,930 single-family homes listed for sale at the end of the month-a 2.4 percent decrease from May's 17,346 and a year-over-year decrease of 25.4 percent. A total of 3,713 townhomes and condos were listed for sale at the end of June, down 0.4 percent from 3,728 in May and down 29.2 percent from June 2011.

The number of available homes listed for sale with no sort of pending or contingent offer also dropped both monthly and yearly. By the end of June, the organization reported 3,690 single-family homes listed without any sort of offer, a 2.9 percent month-over-month decrease and a 67.5 percent year-over-year decrease. For townhomes and condos, GLVAR reported 1,083 properties listed without offers, a 2.4 percent increase from May, but a 59.2 percent decrease from last year.

Almost 35 percent of existing local homes sold during June were short sales. Bank-owned homes made up 27.8 percent of all existing home sales, down almost 5 percentage points from May.

""Since banks have been encouraging short sales and doing fewer foreclosures, short sales have finally surpassed (the sale of) foreclosures,"" said Kelley. ""And since short sales are a better alternative than a foreclosure for homeowners and for our neighborhoods, we think this is a good thing.""