Las Vegas Home Specialist

Wow.  Real estate is not only local, it can turn around in a matter of a few weeks.  Imagine my surprise when I checked on how many listings were in our local Multiple Listing Service in late May and found that for the first time in over a year the inventory of houses and condos for sale had dropped below 20,000.  There continue to be around 19,500 listings.  Closed sales broke 2000 in May, as well.  There were 2,142 closings in May.  There are currently 6839 properties with offers on them.

Most of these sales are centered on REO or homes owned by lending institutions - 1449 to be exact.  Only 7 were short sales.  This means that 734 sales were nondistressed sales.   In addition, most sales are at the very bottom of the price range.  324 sales were for $150,000 or less.  There were 501 sales between $151,000 and $200,000.  511 were between $201,000 and $250,000.  342 were between $251,000 and $300,000.  There were a total of 648 sales over $301,000.  So, when you want to understand the decrease in values everyone is talking about, be aware that this is because there are very few sales over $300,000 when compared to sales below that price.

For more information on buying or selling a home in the greater Las Vegas area or to search the MLS, visit the

Las Vegas Home Specialist website.

The pool of available houses for rent in Las Vegas has been greatly diminished by the number of foreclosures.  Approximately 25 percent of all houses in the Las Vegas valley are rentals and 60 percent of the 12,800 valley properties that went into foreclosure last year were rentals.  Once a house goes back to the bank, a lease no longer has any effect and the renters will be asked to leave.  Deposits may be lost.  There are ways to protect yourself from an unexpected eviction.  Recording the lease at the country recorder’s office will ensure that you are notified of the start of the foreclosure process, which usually takes about four months to complete.

There are also ways to find out if a house you are renting or thinking about renting is in danger of being foreclosed.   Unfortunately, there is no quick 1-800 number to call and get an answer. Instead you have to do a little detective work.  It would make a lot of sense to check this on a monthly basis.

1. Get the address of the rental property. If it’s not in the rental ad, call and get it. Or better yet, set up an appointment to look at the house. That way you’ll be sure the address you’re given is accurate.

2. Go to the Clark County Assessor website:

3. In the top left corner, click on address search and then enter the address. Keep in mind you enter the house number, the street name, the type of street (court, circle, road, etc) on separate lines. If you don’t know what city or town the rental is in.. just leave that unspecified. Even though the rental home is in Las Vegas, it could show up under another town, such as Spring Valley, etc. Anyway, enter the address information and hit submit..

4. You should see a listing with the exact address. It’s probably the first one on the list. Click on the parcel number.

5. Under general information you should see the homeowner’s name and address, and also the parcel number again. Write that parcel number down .. you’ll need it.

6. Go to the Clark County Recorder website.

7. The second listing on the upper far left side of the site is “search records” .. click on that.

8. In the middle of the page you’ll see several options to search on. Simple, Advanced, Instrument ID and Marriage.

9. Click on “Advanced Search“.

10. The only thing you want to concern yourself with on this page is “legal descriptions”. There are four lines under legal descriptions .. you want to use the first line which shows parcel number. In the blank space NEXT to parcel number, you want to enter the parcel number you wrote down. Do not enter the dashes between the number .. just the numbers. Then click on the button below that says “Detail Data“.

This should take you to the “Web Services Detailed Data Results.”

You’ll notice each entry has an instrument number and a document type. If default paperwork has been filed with the recorder’s office, it should be listed here. The most recent actions are listed first. If it’s not listed now .. you may want to check back on a weekly or monthly basis. If you see something that might be a default, or you want more information, write down the instrument number and take it with you to the county recorder’s office. They are there to help you and that instrument number will prevent you from going through all these steps again. Some detailed documents are ONLY available at the county recorder’s office. Employees there will help you find what you’re looking for.

Where is the County Recorder’s office? It’s inside the big stone-looking building at 500 S Grand Central Parkway known as the Clark County Government Center near Charleston. It’s across from the Premium Outlet Mall and near the World Market Center. The recorder’s office is on the second floor. The phone number is 455-4336.

The FHA has expanded guidelines for FHA Secure and opened this product up to more borrowers. These guidelines go into effect on July 14th, 2008. Please remember that the FHA Secure is a temporary program to assist the housing market through its current crisis.

The FHA Secure…

• Includes borrowers delinquent on their non-FHA ARMs due to a rate reset or the occurrence of an extenuating circumstance but experienced no more than two 30-day or one 60-day late payment in the 12 months prior to the rate reset or extenuating circumstance that caused the delinquency; or
• Includes borrowers delinquent on their non-FHA ARMs due to a rate reset or the occurrence of an extenuating circumstance but experienced no more than one 90-day late payment or no more than three 30-day late payments prior to the rate reset or extenuating circumstance that caused the delinquency provided the loan-to-value on the FHA insured first mortgages does not exceed 90 percent.

In addition,

• Borrowers delinquent on their interest-only and/or payment option ARMs are not eligible for this expansion: borrowers with these types of mortgages must demonstrate that a rate reset caused the delinquency and that they were making the monthly mortgage payments within the month due during the six months prior to the rate reset.
• For borrowers refinancing delinquent non-FHA ARMs the up-front mortgage insurance premium (UFMIP) is set at 2.25 percent of the base loan amount (loan amount excluding UFMIP) regardless of the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio. For LTV ratios greater than 95 percent (excluding UFMIP) the annual premium (collected monthly) is set at .55 percent.

In the May 7 issue of Money magazine, Las Vegas was listed as one of the top markets to experience a housing value decline in the next year. The magazine predicted that values would drop 18.3 percent through 2009. This was based on a median price of $277,000. In an example of how local news must always be taken into consideration when reading analyses made on the national level, the median price for a home in Las Vegas was $236,000 in April. This is 14.7 percent lower than the number used by Money magazine.

In another example of how quickly market numbers can change, available listings in the MLS are currently at 21,144, down from previous months. Of great significance, there are currently 6,365 listings with accepted offers. 1,117 of these are short sales, which statistically have around a 10 percent change of reaching a successful sale.  3,124 are bank owned properties, The balance are nondistress sales. Half way through the month of May there have already been 893 sales. These numbers are significantly higher than April.

If you have any thoughts or predictions on our local market, please feel free to comment below. If you would like more information on housing prices and trends, visit the Las Vegas Home Specialist website.

For the first time since September 2005, sales of single family homes in Las Vegas were higher than the same month of the previous year.   There were 1,794 home sales in April, nearly 30 percent more than in April 2007.  This was the fourth consecutive monthly increase of sales in Las Vegas.  Sales were up 20 percent from March 2008.
The inventory of homes available for sale has stabilized at 22,942, a 3.1 percent increase from a year ago.

The median price of a single family home is now $235,875, down 3 percent from March.  The price is down 22.67 percent from a year ago.  The decline is  attributable to the number of short sales and foreclosures selling for below market value.  These sales continue to account for more than half of all homes sold each month.

Condo and townhome sales were up 7.1 percent from March, with 212 total sales in April.  This is down 28.4 percent from April 2007.  The median price was $155,000, down 4.9 percent from March and down 22.3 percent from a year ago.

It’s been six months since short sales were discussed here.  (What Is A Short Sale? and Buying A Short Sale Property).  There have been some significant changes with regard to these kinds of transactions. One of the most important changes came through the Taxpayer Relief Act of 2007, which relieved people who had their properties foreclosed upon, deeded back to the lender or sold for less than was owned on the mortgages from having to pay taxes on the difference between the sale amount and the amount of the loan.

How does a short sale affect credit?  This question has been answered by the way lenders are responding.  Generally, a prospective borrower who has sold a property for less than was owned on it, has lost a house through foreclosure or has signed a deed in lieu of foreclosure will not be able to qualify for a new mortgage for two years.

How successful have sellers been in selling their houses for less than is owed on them?  The numbers are interesting.  There are currently 4926 properties listed for sale in Clark County as short sales.  Since January 1, 2007, there have 796 sales of short sale properties.  Almost half of those have occurred since January 1, 2008.  We’ll be watching these numbers closely because if they continue to rise, this will indicate lenders are becoming willing to negotiate these sales.

For buyers, short sales have been a source of great frustration.  Offers made may take up to 12 weeks to receive a response and, as the figures indicate, may very well be rejected.  As a result after attempting to purchase a short sale property, many buyers are staying away from these listings.  Again, should the numbers of successful short sales continue to rise, this may become a viable option for the buyer who does not want to spend a lot of time waiting.

There were 1,478 sales of single family homes in the greater Las Vegas valley in the MLS during the month of March.  This is 34.6 percent more than in February and the third straight monthly increase.  More than half of those sales were foreclosures or short sales.  773 of the 1,478 sales, 52.3 percent of the total, were bank owned or sold for less than the mortgages owed.  There are currently 22,753 houses listed for sale in the MLS.  Median prices declined 1.4 percent from February, to $243,169.

Want to search for available houses in the Las Vegas valley?  Go to the Las Vegas Home Specialist and click on the Home Search button.  No need to sign in; just plug in your search criteria.

Local Las Vegas real estate analysts sense the Las Vegas Valley real estate market is reaching it’s bottom, as indicated by statistics showing increased home sales and a stabilizing inventory.  Median existing home prices have fallen to $237,000, which is below the $240,000 level which is thought to be the low point for values here.  Dennis Smith, president of Home Builders Research says that with tight credit and qualifying requirements for new mortgages, Las Vegas is at what will be an “extended bottom.”  Recovery will come not in the shape of a “V,” but a flat bottomed “U.”  Prices, when they do start to go up, are predicted to increase by 1.5% to 2% for 2009 and 2010.

The IRS recently issued a new ruling for taxpayers who wish to do a 1031 exchange involving a vacation home.  Bear in mind that you can only exchange property for the purpose of deferring tax liability if the property is held for investment or used in business.  You must, therefore, be able to show that your vacation home was used for rental income.  The IRS has set up exact parameters for determining if your vacation home was, in fact, used in a manner entitling it to be used for an exchange.  The standards apply both to the vacation home being sold (the old property) which proceeds will be used to purchase another property investment and, if using the proceeds of a sale from other investment or business property for a vacation home, the newly purchased vacation home (the new property).

First, you must own the vacation home for 24 months.  Then, for each 12 month period, you must rent the property at fair market value for at least 14 days.  During the same period, you may use the home for 14 days or 10% of the time of the days rented, whichever is greater.  There will also be a reasonable number of days allowed for maintenance.  The key to successfully using your vacation home in a 1031 exchange will be good recording keeping.  As in any investment, the advise of an accountant is of primary importance.

Click here for  more information about buying or selling a vacation in Las Vegas.

This year’s RCLCO (an independent real estate advisory firm) survey of master-planned communities, has identified a notable trend in master-planned communities.  Retail town centers have emerged as the “it” amenity in successful master-planned communities.  In the past, golf course communities have been the popular amenity, but the No. 1 selling master-planned community, Mountain’s Edge in southwest Las Vegas does not have a golf course.  The study found that about 40 percent of all master-planned communities surveyed have a retail town center and many of them performed as well if not better than golf course communities in sales and prices.