Heavy Distress Sends Las Vegas Home Prices to 15-Year Low

Sales of foreclosed REO homes and short sales continue to dominate the Las Vegas market. These distressed sales made up nearly 70 percent of the region's home resales in June, according to the research firm ""DataQuick"":http://www.dataquick.com.

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Foreclosure resales â€" homes that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months â€" accounted for 57.5 percent of the Las Vegas resale market during the month, up from 45.2 percent a year earlier, the real estate tracking company reported.

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Short sales comprised an estimated 11.0 percent of the area's June resales. That's down from 19.6 percent the same time last year, but up from 7.0 percent two years earlier.

With such a large share of foreclosure resales, the median home price in the Las Vegas metro area dropped to $115,000 in June â€" the lowest it's been since October 1995, according to DataQuick.

The company also found that 50.6 percent of the Las Vegas-area homes sold during the month of June were purchased by cash buyers. DataQuick says the heavy presence of investors and others paying cash, with their focus on lower-cost homes, helps explain why 41.1 percent of June sales were for less than $100,000.

DataQuick's reports also showed that the number of homes foreclosed on in the Las Vegas region in June fell from May but rose sharply from a year earlier.

The company says lenders foreclosed on 3,673 single-family house and condo units during the month, down 3.8 percent from May but up 39.1 percent from June 2010. The figures are based on the number of Trustees Deeds filed at the county recorder's office.