A Look at the Las Vegas Housing Market
In major cities across the United States, housing markets seem to be cooling off. This initially sounds like good news for buyers, but prices remain at record highs compared to the market we saw before the pandemic. Although housing inventory has dramatically increased in 2023 compared to the previous year, in many places this increase still isn’t enough to make up for the plummeting for-sale stock that followed the home-buying frenzy induced by COVID-19.
Similar patterns can be seen in the Las Vegas housing market; as one of the biggest victims of the 2008 market crash, this area is of particular interest to real estate investors. Let’s take a closer look at the market in Las Vegas so far in 2023.
Prices Are Falling and Inventory is Rising
Overall, prices in Las Vegas and the surrounding metro area have been gradually coming down since mid-2022. Within the city, the median home sale price reached its peak in June 2022, at $434,000. As of March 2023, the median has dropped to $395,000. Year-over-year, this is a 6% decrease. However, when comparing to pre-COVID market conditions, prices in Las Vegas are still high. In March 2019, the median sale price was only $275,000.
This trend remains consistent among almost all cities in the metro area, with the most dramatic changes in the past year occurring in Winchester (-32.4%), Henderson (-12.9%), and Boulder City (-10.7%). The only exception is in Summerlin South, where home prices have continued to increase since March 2022, going from $660,000 on average to $715,000.
Part of the cause of these reduced prices is a slowing in the market and a gradual restoration of the housing inventory. From March 2019 to March 2022, the stock in Las Vegas dropped from 4,460 to just 1,651. In the past year, the available home inventory has come back up to 2,455. Similar to other trends seen across the country, inventories are coming back up and reflecting a slowdown in the market, but still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. The biggest increases within the past year were seen in Henderson (64.8%), North Las Vegas (57.5%), and Summerlin South (51.6%).
Houses Are Staying on the Market Longer and Selling for Less
As the number of available homes for sale in Las Vegas increases, so does the time that the average house spends on the market. In the metro area, this time rose from just 18 days in 2022 to 67 days in 2023. In Nevada as a whole overall, the average days on market has increased by 235%. The city with the greatest increase in this metric is North Las Vegas, increasing by 527.3% from 11 days to 69 days. These statistics clearly show us that people aren’t as frantic to close a deal this year, and are willing to wait it out and weigh their options.
Another indicator of this trend is the average sale-to-list ratio. This statistic compares the price of a house when it is listed to the price that it actually sells for. From 2017 to 2022, the sale-to-list price surpassed 100% during two periods, one in 2021 and the other in 2022. The highest it ever reached was 100.4% in June 2022. In contrast, its lowest point since then was in January 2023, at 96.8%. In all 12 Vegas metro cities, the sale-to-list ratio has decreased year-over-year. This year, they all have ratios below 100%, indicating a buyer’s market.
Overall, trends are indicating that the market in Las Vegas is returning to more “normal” conditions, although prices are still high relative to 2020 and prior.
