Las Vegas resale housing market ended 2015 with mixed results

Las Vegas’ resale housing market ended 2015 with mixed results, with a jump in December sales but a dip in prices, which had been flat for months.

Single-family homes sold for a median $217,000 in Southern Nevada last month, down 1.4 percent from November but up 6.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

Buyers picked up 2,679 single-family homes in December, up 35.8 percent from November and 20.4 percent year-over-year, GLVAR sales totals show.

Before last month, the median price of single-family homes had been the same since August, at $220,000, and sales of such homes had dropped each of those months.

Overall, however, Southern Nevada property owners sold 38,578 single-family homes, townhouses, condos and high-rise units last year, up 7.7 percent from 2014, says the GLVAR.

The trade group reports data from its listing service, which largely comprises previously owned homes.

Despite the ups and downs, 2015 was relatively mild — as compared to the rapidly soaring prices of the boom years last decade, the crashing home values of the recession, and the investor-fueled blast-off in prices a few years ago.

Universal Realty owner Scott Beaudry, president of GLVAR’s board of directors this year, said in the report that 2015 “will be remembered” as the time when Las Vegas’ market “stabilized after the roller-coaster ride we had been on during the past decade or so.”

Fewer homes sold last year than in both 2013 and 2012, when bargain-hunting investors scooped up cheap houses, often in bulk, to turn into rentals. Their buying binge pushed up prices at one of the fastest rates nationwide, sparking fears of another bubble.