Single-family home sales cool as buyers eye condos

Homebuilders’ best-selling product in Las Vegas — the single-family house — continues to lose ground to less-expensive condos and townhomes.

Builders closed 769 sales of single-family homes in Southern Nevada last month, down 6.6 percent from May 2018, and closed 138 sales of attached homes, up 5.3 percent, according to a new report from Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research.

Buyers paid a median price of $399,636 for single-family homes last month, compared with $294,039 for condos and townhouses.

Overall, builders closed 3,498 sales of single-family houses this year through May, down 7.1 percent from the same five-month stretch last year, and 577 sales of attached homes, up 27 percent, Home Builders Research reported.

The resale market, which dominates Las Vegas’ housing sector, has seen signs of a cool-down lately.

House prices aren’t climbing nearly as fast as they were a year ago, and the once-depleted tally of available listings has shot back up, following a stretch of fast-rising prices and rising mortgage rates that, collectively, sparked affordability concerns.

In recent months, prices have been flat. The median sales price of previously owned single-family homes — the bulk of the market — was $300,000 in May, unchanged from both April and March, according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

Compared with a year earlier, the median house price was up 1.7 percent last month, the smallest yearover-year gain in seven years, the association reported.

A total of 7,855 houses were on the market without offers at the end of May, up 90.7 percent from May 2018, acording to the GLVAR.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.