Economy: THANK GAWD, Home Prices & Sales Rise!

As a new Las Vegas homeowner myself, I'm enjoying a HUGE sigh of relief!

After a two-month dip, home sales rebounded in October and prices continued to hold steady, according to statistics released this morning by the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

The GLVAR reported 3,535 sales of single-family homes in October, a 5.3 percent increase over September when there were 3,358 sales. Median prices rose nearly 1 percent to $139,100, the highest since it was $138,800 in July. [...]

Demand for homes continues to be fueled by investors and first-time homebuyers. Cash buyers accounted for 42 percent of the sales.

The sales of foreclosed-upon homes declined in October, falling to 64.5 percent of the total. It was 67 percent in September.

And thank goodness, beneath the nice top line numbers are some good internals. While foreclosures and short sales still dominate this market, regular sales are at least starting to make a rebound. And hopefully with all the cash buyers coming in (like moi!), we won't see too many "repeat foreclosures" in the near future.

Oh, and thank goodness for that $8,000 new homebuyer tax credit! I myself look forward to taking advantage of it next year to pay for some home improvements, and I'm sure other new homebuyers were brought into the Vegas market thanks to the hope of a little help on the way next year come tax time.

And by the way, guess who's been working super hard on extending that $8,000 tax credit through 2010? Harry Reid and Dina Titus! No wonder why the Republicans are now running scared. With recovery on the way and more help for Nevada's working families coming soon, they really have nothing to run on.

Las Vegas: "Jerk Magnet"?

I dunno. I'll let you decide for yourself. Here's the original LA Times story piling onto the "Vegas in hard times" theme... And here's Andrew Kiraly's response at LV CityLife.

Were these people victims of the recession? Or are they just reckless bourgeois wanna-be's in need of a financial reality check?

Home? In Vegas?

Honestly, I'm still getting used to it. It's such a strange concept, especially for all of us "newbies" who move in after experiencing Las Vegas mainly as the tourist trap that we lovingly call The Strip. The Strip is always lively, always lit up to the hilt, always full of crazy drunk people doing wildly irresponsible things. How is that home?

But then I come to my lovely corner of Green Valley in Henderson, and everything changes. It's a sea of red-tiled roofs. It's full of families raising kids, quietly paying the bills, doing everything possible to avoid foreclosure, basically doing their best to be responsible citizens. Oddly enough, it's a community and it feels like home.

Stacy Willis explores the concept of calling Las Vegas home in this week's Las Vegas Weekly, though she comes at it from a slightly different perspective. With all these people losing their homes, where do they go? The homeless population has surged, and public and private agencies are scrambling to figure out what to do about it. Where can they go home? Do we have a responsibility in our home community to do something?

I feel blessed to call my home just that. But sometimes, I also feel a little fear as I wonder how close I may be to losing it and how close some of the people I know are to losing their homes. Is there a chance this will make us realize that so many of us actually want to call this place home and treat this great valley as such?

Is Vegas Affordable Yet?

Apparently, not so. Despite the fact that home prices have dropped precipitously in the last two years, wages are still too low for far too many Nevadans to afford a home. On average, Nevadans working for minimum wage spend at least 75% of their earnings on housing alone. This simply isn't sustainable, especially since so much of our workforce earns either minimum wage or just above the minimum.

This is something to consider when folks talk about Vegas being "a bargain"... Maybe for househunters that can afford to "bargain hunt", but still not for far too many people.