Survey indicates positive outlook for housing market

Local Realtors have an increasingly optimistic outlook about the local housing market for this year due to the latest Quarterly Sentiment Index from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies in partnership with the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors. Lied Institute researchers surveyed a select group of GLVAR members about their expectations for home prices, sales and construction for the first quarter and through 2017.

“These findings show that our local Realtors are more optimistic (about) 2017 than they have been since we started doing this survey in early 2016,” said David J. Tina, GLVAR president and longtime local Realtor.

Tina pointed out that more than half of the local Realtors who responded to the survey see home prices, sales and construction increasing throughout the next year. Only 6 percent envision home sales decreasing, and only 3 percent see homebuilding decreasing during the next year.

“It was interesting to see that not one Realtor who was surveyed thought that local home prices will go down over the next year,” Tina added. “And not one said that they believe the real estate market will get worse over the next year.”

Peter Counts, a data analyst at the Lied Institute who oversaw the survey, said the index increased from 112 during the fourth quarter of 2016 to 117 for the first quarter of 2017. This was well above its baseline value of 100 established in the first survey conducted for the second quarter of 2016, indicating greater confidence in the health of the Southern Nevada housing market.

According to Counts, “this represents the fourth consecutive quarterly increase in the shortrun 90-day forecast and a growing confidence in the health of the Las Vegas housing market for the next 90 days.”

The 32 leading local Realtors who responded to the survey, which was conducted in December, were most optimistic about the prospect of increasing home prices and home sales, with more than 40 percent expecting both to increase during the next 90 days.

He said respondents were less optimistic about the construction of new homes for the next quarter, with only 30 percent expecting an increase in homebuilding activity during the first quarter. When looking at the overall local housing market for the first three months of 2017, 41 percent believe it is improving, with 56 percent expecting it will stay about the same, and only 3 percent expecting it to get worse.

The survey also asked these Realtors about their expectations for home prices, sales and housing construction during the next year.

They were even more optimistic about the prospects for the coming year than they were about the coming quarter. In fact, Counts said, these responses on the housing market over the next year yielded an annual sentiment index value of 133. This represents the second consecutive quarter where this sentiment index increased, and it marked a 9-point increase from the value of 124 that the same index showed for the fourth quarter of 2016.

As for possible headwinds, some Realtors responding to the survey suggested that rising interest rates could cause a slight slowdown in the housing market.

GLVAR’s latest report on the local housing market showed that the median price of existing singlefamily homes sold in Southern Nevada during January through its Multiple Listing Service was $238,000. That was up 8.7 percent from January 2016.

Despite an increasingly tight local housing supply, GLVAR also reported that more existing homes were sold in 2016 than during 2015 throughout Southern Nevada.