According to newly released statistics, tAccording to Stark, 2010 should be the beginning of a recovery for residential real estate in the area, but he says the extent of that recovery will depend in part upon how successful Southern Nevada is in continued job creation.

Barbee predicts that with 2010 will come a more efficient climate for conducting short sales and loan modifications.

“Short sales have been very, very difficult the past two years,” he said. “Banks have not been truly motivated to work on them expeditiously and as a result they have taken anywhere from 6 months to 18 months to complete. The lengthy timeframes have led to unusually high fallout rates in those escrows.”
he hard-hit Las Vegas real estate market is poised for a comeback. Data compiled by the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors (GLVAR) and the locally-based real estate firm Prudential Americana Group show that approximately 95,000 transactions, or an estimated 47,500 home sales, were made there in 2009.

Mark Stark, CEO of Prudential Americana, which says it was involved in more than one out of every 10 home sales in Las Vegas last year, explained, “Even though the average sales prices are down, we posted nearly 50 percent more transactions than we did the previous year.

Based on GLVAR’s records, the average single family home sold in the area in December 2008 was $204,000 in December 2008. By December of 2009, that number had fallen to $165,000.

“Prices are down 14 to 15 percent year over year, but that is a victory after dropping three percent per month,” said Forrest Barbee, Prudential Americana Group’s corporate broker and a GLVAR board member.

Barbee says 2009’s annual drop is a definite positive compared to the 33 percent plunge seen from December 2007 to December 2008.

One other bright spot Stark saw was the overall affordability of homes. “People who thought in the past that homeownership was out of reach have now come to understand that they have a golden opportunity to not only purchase a home, but look forward to long-term appreciation,” he said.

Perhaps the figure that stands out the most from the data is that 67 percent of all current pending sales in Las Vegas are short sales – 8,935 out of 13,406.

Another attention-grabber is that GLVAR now lists just 2,367 available REO properties, compared to nearly 10,000 one year ago.

“In 2009, the big trend in the Las Vegas resale market included the significant increase in cash sales for both investors and first time homebuyers,” said Barbee. “We saw 41 percent of home closings in December 2009 made with cash while FHA/VA buyers continue to make up one third of the closings and conventional loans.”

Barbee noted that over the past 12 months Las Vegas has experienced a shrinking inventory of available properties – most notably bank-owned listings. “This came in the wake of a significant increase in overall demand, which resulted in record high resale closings in the last half of 2009,” he said.
But Barbee is hopeful that the administration’s new Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program will pave the way for a much needed streamlined short sale process in Las Vegas and Nevada.