Investors’ retreat from Las Vegas housing market triggers sales slowdown

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Steve Marcus

An aerial view of a residential neighborhood in Las Vegas.

Wed, Oct 29, 2014 (2 a.m.)

When investors flocked to Las Vegas for cheap homes after the economy crashed, they resurrected the housing market with sorely needed spending.

But with the economy healing and prices much higher, many investors have been packing their bags — and their exit is causing a big slowdown in business.

Throughout the valley, listings of previously owned homes increasingly are being ignored, sales volume is dropping and prices aren’t climbing nearly as fast as a year ago, all while the share of cash buyers has plunged.

Investors snapped up homes to turn into rentals, and their buying frenzy pushed up housing values at one of the fastest rates nationally, helping numerous homeowners escape underwater status. Still, their pullback could in some ways be good for Las Vegas’ volatile housing sector.

They’re slowing a market that got so heated with spending that insiders feared another bubble was forming. The slackened competition also gives locals — who were elbowed aside the past few years by investors’ barrage of bids — a better chance at buying a place.

Investors still comprise a sizeable share of local buyers, but faced with rising prices they helped create, their spending has “fallen off a cliff,” Universal Realty owner Scott Beaudry said.

“Now they actually have a shot,” he said of mom-and-pop buyers.

Things are slowing nationally, too. U.S. home prices in August were up 5 percent year-to-year, down from about 13 percent annual growth in August 2013, according to the closely watched S&P/Case-Shiller indices.

The transition from a heated market to a slower and steadier one is “great news” and could draw younger, first-time buyers, according to Stan Humphries, chief economist at housing-data firm Zillow.

“In housing, boring is better,” he said.

Locally, some 34 percent of homes that sold in September went to cash buyers. That’s near a five-year low and well below a peak of almost 60 percent in early 2013, indicating a steep drop in investor spending, according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

As they back out, the number of single-family homes listed for sale but without offers has more than doubled the past two years, to about 8,200 as of September. That’s according to data from the GLVAR’s listing service, which mostly has previously owned homes.

All told, roughly 22,300 single-family homes on the listing service were sold this year through September, down 13 percent from the same period last year.

A key reason for the ignored listings is the investor pullback, but another is that homeowners, emboldened by the run-up in values the past few years, are overpricing and not getting bites.

The median sales price for a single-family home in September was $202,500, up 12.5 percent from a year earlier — but the median price then was up 29 percent from fall 2012, according to the GLVAR.

Despite the slower growth, many homeowners expect values to keep soaring at an eye-popping pace, and they want to sell for much more than their homes are worth.

“There are a lot of unrealistic sellers,” Realty One Group agent Jim Brooks said.

Buyers also are taking more time to find a house as they pay closer attention to properties’ conditions.

When foreclosed homes and short sales dominated the market the past few years, buyers assumed a house would have to be fixed up and weren't fazed by its disrepair. But that’s no longer the case, Keller Williams Realty broker David Brownell said.

As investors pull back, the days of almost every listing getting multiple offers have largely faded. Buyers don’t feel as much pressure to take whatever house they can get, even if it’s beat up.

“People are now expecting homes to be in better shape,” Brownell said.

Overall, the market has improved considerably from the depths of the recession, thanks in big part to the investors, but things are by no means problem-free.

Banks aren’t targeting delinquent homeowners nearly as often as last year, though Nevada still had the fourth-highest foreclosure rate in the country last quarter, according to RealtyTrac.

The rate of underwater borrowers — people whose mortgage debt outweighs their home’s value — also has plunged, but Las Vegas’ current rate of 27.4 percent remains second-highest among major metro areas, according to Zillow.

And while locals face less competition to buy a house, that doesn’t mean they can afford one. Nevadans have some of the worst personal finances in the country, and many residents, after going bankrupt or losing their home to foreclosure during the recession, still can’t get a mortgage.

The soaring, investor-fueled market wasn’t normal, and such booms only contribute to roller-coaster rides that take a toll on real estate agents, homeowners, prospective buyers and the community at large, said Heidi Kasama, GLVAR president and managing broker of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices’ Summerlin office.

As she sees it, the market now is more stable, and better.

“I don’t want to see those extremes again,” she said.

All chart data according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

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