If there’s one thing more exciting than the local housing market, it’s the constant conversation about what it’s doing and where it’s headed. 

 No wonder housing has become  a hot topic  in southern Nevada. Over the past two decades, we’ve been on a real estate roller coaster. Local home prices exploded at a record rate in the early 2000s, hitting $315,000 in 2006, falling only faster than anywhere else in the country during the Great Recession. Prices hit a low in early 2012 and have continued to recover ever since. 

 It took us almost 14 years to break this home price record in June 2006. We finally broke that price in February 2020, a month before the pandemic hit the public. our community and change our lives forever. 

 So far, we’ve set a new  local home price record almost every month. According to the latest statistics from Las Vegas Realtors, the median price of current single-family homes sold in southern Nevada through the Multi-Home Registration Service (MLS) in August was 405,000. dollars. This matches the all-time record set in July. Despite this month-long hiatus, median home prices are still up 20.9% from $335,000 a year ago. 

 The story is similar for local apartments and townhouses, which sold in August for an average of $229,000. It is also an all-time high and is up 23.8% from $185,000 in August 2020. 

 It remains to be seen whether this break is a brief respite from the property bull run. our recent all-time high or a sign of a recession, as some domestic experts have recently predicted. 

 In any case, it is certainly true that local home prices have risen much faster than incomes. And this is not sustainable in the long run. 

 Even with mortgage  rates near historic lows, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for many potential buyers and working-class families to buy a home here. This has led some buyers to consider alternatives to the traditional single-family home and start looking for more affordable options such as condos, townhouses, and even rentals. 

 Perhaps the biggest challenge we face is the lack of housing for people to buy. The local housing supply has never been as scarce as it is today. 

 The pandemic is certainly a factor in this current housing crisis, but our  inventory availability is near historic lows long before the pandemic hit here in March 2020 

 Although they are building more houses this year than last year, builders have not built enough houses to meet demand. They’ve been building for years and will likely take a few years to catch up, assuming they’ll be able to do so soon. 

 Homeowners also stay indoors longer and move more slowly than in previous years. 

 While these challenges are undeniable, we are starting to see positives for buyers. Aside from the price drop, we’re finally seeing signs of more homes hitting the market. For example, August marked the seventh consecutive month that more properties were for sale in southern Nevada without an offer than the previous month. So at least the housing shortage doesn’t get worse. 

 The same thing is happening across the country. According to Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey, the housing market is showing signs of slowing down across the country, making buyers more optimistic. In August, 32% of consumers said it was a good time to buy a home. That’s up from 28% in July, according to a survey of 1,000 American adults. This marks the first sign of improvement in homebuyer sentiment since March. 

 For many years, Las Vegas has been an outlier among major metropolitan areas, an extreme city, with our population and home prices growing faster than almost anywhere else in the country. But that has not been the case in recent years, even during this pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, the local market has been more in line with national trends, with a shortage of available-for-sale housing, strong demand and historically low mortgage rates leading to sales. Higher sales and record housing prices. 

 While our median home price is now slightly above the national average, our growth is no longer near the top of the list. As odd as it may sound to longtime locals, Las Vegas isn’t as quaint as it once was. 

 However, my brokerage colleagues and I understand that this can be difficult, if not overwhelming, for first-time and primary buyers trying to find a home. on the market today. 

 Rest assured, our more than 16,500  Las Vegas Realtors members are doing all they can to help people realize their homeownership dreams. We spend a lot of time these days advising our customers to be patient and persistent. In the end, most people who work with a qualified local real estate agent find a home.

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