Las Vegas home sales reach highest level in four years

A new report shows Las Vegas home sales fell from December to January at a normal seasonal pace, but data indicates more consumers are moving to Sin City compared to a year ago.

Record levels of investors and cash buyers purchased properties in the city last month, leading to 3,669 home sales, reported MDA DataQuick. While that was down 20.8 percent from December, experts said that's not far off from the average sales drop between those two months. Additionally, January sales were 9.9 percent higher compared to a year earlier, the first year-over-year increase in seven months and a particularly encouraging sign given that buyers today don't have the incentive of the federal homebuyer tax credit that they had last year.

Sales of homes priced less than $100,000 made up 38.6 percent of home sales - the highest percentage of low-priced sales since the start of the housing downturn - and absentee buyers represented 49.2 percent of all local home sales last month. That was the highest percentage since 2000 and showed the high level of interest investors currently have in the Las Vegas market.

Families intent on packing their moving boxes and purchasing a new home could benefit from that activity by purchasing fixed-up homes from investors and organizations. The Federal Housing Administration recently made that possibility easier, by extending a suspension of its anti-house flipping rule, which prohibited buyers from using an FHA loan to buy a home that was owned for fewer than 90 days.
 

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