Just when we expected a softening or a slowdown in the Real Estate Market, BAM, we get another great month. Spoiler Alert… it was a really strong month for Single Family Homes in the Las Vegas Valley. If you’re looking for my 3rd Quarter Report, that will be coming in the next couple weeks. To tide you over, our September update will have to do! As always, the stats are for Single Family Homes Only. To request a specific market or neighborhood, contact me here:

Closed Sales

We had a great bounce back month. If you recall from our August Report, sales dipped from July to August, and our rebound in September was equally as strong. We finished the month of September with 3285 Sales of Single Family Homes, which was almost as high as July (3331). This is the strongest September in years, and was 19.3% higher than September 2019. To put things in perspective (which is what I try and do here), in May of this year, we had only 1711 closed Single Family sales. Just a few months later, we almost doubled that amount. We love seeing sales at this level. It will be interesting to monitor what happens as we move into the fall, when we generally see a natural market slowdown. Will we see the same slowdown this year? Probably. Will our lows be higher than normal? My guess is yes.

Pending Sales

As you know from me… a closed sale must start somewhere, and that’s with a Pending Sale. These are the homes that went under contract, set to be sold. While some homes do fall out of contract, the number generally shows a leading indicator of what will happen in the coming month or two for closed sales. And for anyone thinking this market is looking to slow any time soon, should just need to look at THIS chart to realize the stats do not justify that belief.

For September, we had 3563 Homes Pending. That represents a 30.7% increase over September of 2019. It is also over 100% MORE than we had in April of 2020, right during the lockdown phase. Our 3563 represents the most PENDING SALES we have had in this market since Spring of 2012!!!!! That’s an 8.5 year high. People. The market has reacted. People are taking advantage of extremely low rates, and are buying. Sellers are taking advantage of very low inventory levels (more on this later) and selling. The Real Estate Market in Las Vegas is HEALTHY!

Inventory Levels (Homes for Sale)

Our Inventory ‘crisis’ if you will has only gotten worse. At the end of September, we had only 5,595 homes available for sale. That is it. That is 42.6% LOWER than the amount we had last September, and roughly 4300 homes LESS THAN we had available in June 2019. We have now had 5 months of DECLINING inventory in a row. Our ‘high’ for this calendar year was in April when we had just under 7900 homes available for sale.

Price, for the most part, is as simple as supply and demand. If demand is there, which it is given low interest rates and people wanting ‘more home’ with home office options, and our inventory levels remain low, pricing will continue to rise, which is what we have seen. When Demand is High and Inventory is Low, we also see homes sell quicker, creating LESS Months of Inventory, which we will showcase next.

Months of Inventory

For you regular readers, you know Months of Inventory is my favorite stat and chart, because it shows the overall health of our Housing Market. We have a chart that looks very similar to the Inventory Levels above. Currently, at the end of September, the Las Vegas Valley was carrying roughly 2.1 Months of Inventory, or roughly 65 days worth. That’s it. A ‘balanced’ market in Las Vegas is somewhere closer to 4-5 months, so it shows you we have more demand than supply. 2.1 Months of inventory is again down 41.7% from where it was in September 2019, and a full 0.9 months (or roughly 27 days) less than we were in May of this year! 2.1 Months is very low, but now the all-time low we have for our market… that would be the very end of 2017 into the beginning of 2018, when we hit 2.0 Months of inventory. So we’re not that far from there.

Days on Market

I don’t necessarily need to put a chart on for these two stats, but they are worth mentioning. Our Median and Average Days on Market. The Median is the middle amount, and the Average of course, is the average. This is the time a home is ACTIVE, before it goes Under Contract.

• Median Days on Market: 13 Days on Market (-50% from September 2019).

  • This is a crazy low number. Less than 2 weeks. The ‘middle ground’ home is on the market less than 2 weeks before an Accepted Offer. In January, this number was 34 days!

• Average Days on Market: 36 Days on Market (-16.3% from September 2019)

  • This is not as shockingly low, but this takes into account ALL properties. The reason this number is higher is because, as we know, a home that is priced way too high often won’t sell, or sit on the market longer. So this takes that into consideration. But even counting those homes, the average time on market is 36 days! Not a long time at all!

Sales Price

The stat you all love to see. Sales Price. We did see a little slowdown, but still moving at full speed. The Median Sales Price for September broke another all time record, closing at $337,500. This is an 8.9% increase from September 2019. We bottomed in January of this year at $305,000, so we’re up about 11% since then and up 8.9% since April when we hit the retraction number with COVID.

Sales Volume is there. Pending Sales are High. Inventory is low. Interest Rates are Low. This market is strong, and there are no signs that we are going to see any sort of abrupt disruption to this, yet.

Let us know what YOU think!