Amid pandemic gloom, Las Vegas housing market ‘on fire’

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Wade Vandervort

A sign advertises a home for sale in Southern Highlands, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020.

Thu, Aug 6, 2020 (5 a.m.)

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Southern Nevada home prices continued to inch higher in July, according to a new report.

The median price of an existing home in the Las Vegas area hit $330,000, the Las Vegas Realtors trade group said today, which represents a new all-time record.

The price represents a slight bump from June and an increase of 9% from July 2019.

“The Las Vegas housing market is not just a bright spot in the economy, it’s on fire,” said Tom Blanchard, a local agent and the president of the LVR group. “Local home prices are at record levels, with historically low interest rates, strong demand and a tight housing supply driving the market.”

While the recent pandemic-driven economic downturn in Southern Nevada has devastated other parts of the region’s economy — tens of thousands of Nevadans remain out of work because of what the virus has done to the area’s tourism-heavy leading industries — the housing market remains largely untouched.

That’s different from the previous recession that hit the region about a decade ago.

In 2012, the median price for a home in Southern Nevada bottomed out at an all-time low of $118,000, according to LVR figures.

“After seeing sales slow when this pandemic hit our state, it’s good to see that we sold more homes last month than we did during the same time last year,” Blanchard said.

One of the reasons why the median price sits at an all-time high, Blanchard said, is that high-priced homes have made up a larger share of total homes sold in recent months.

For condos and townhomes, the median sale price for a unit in July was $196,000, up 12% from July 2019.

When compared with the same month in 2019, the total number (4,025) of homes, condos and townhomes sold in July was up more than 5%.

While prices have gone up, supply remains low. Blanchard said the number of homes now on the market is “well below” the six-month supply that’s generally needed for a market to be considered balanced.

Founded in 1947 and previously known as the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, the LVR group comprises more than 14,000 area agents.

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