New home sales are up 11% nationally compared to last month sales. This hasn’t been seen in 9 years and is also the 3rd consecutive month of growth.

What does this mean for Las Vegas home buyers considering purchasing a short sale in Las Vegas, a foreclosure in Clark County or a new home. Builders are trying to compete with all of the foreclosures and short sales that are currently on the Las Vegas real estate market so they have had to reduce their prices. The median price of homes in Las Vegas have dropped from the high of 315,000 to the new median price which is under 150,00. This good news because it gives another choice for frustrated homebuyers trying to get a home in this busy Las Vegas real estate market.

If you build a new home, it will probably take about 3 to 4 months from dirt.  That’s about how long it takes to get a short sale in Las Vegas approved!  A favorite line I once heard from a new home sales agent was, ” No one has ever cut there toe nails here!”  That is the nice thing about purchasing new. New appliances, carpet paint, that new home smell!

Builders are including such things as stoves, washer and dryers, refrigerators etc. Anyone who has looked through short sale listings as well as valley foreclosures knows 4 out 5 is missing at least one of these items if not all. The other nice thing is it will close, for sure! That can be one of the most frustrating thing when it comes to someone buying a short sale home. It can take 2 to 4 months and there are no sure signs that say yes it’s  close. One of the hardest things is to keep the buyer committed to the sale.

If you are interested in new home sales in Las Vegas, please call us so we can set up a new home search for you.

Las Vegas is always referred to as “Ground Zero” for all of the foreclosures and short sales we have here in Clark County.

It is estimated that 1 in 13  Las Vegas homes are in some phase of foreclosure. Nationally there are more than 3 million homeowners over 60 days late. There are currently 11,393 short sales in Las Vegas on the market of which 6,325 of the short sales are in contingent status, meaning there is an offer on the home. That leaves 45% of the short sale homes currently available for offers.

Las Vegas real estate has had 22,808 closing since January 1, 2009 and short sale listings were 2,027 of them. That is less than 9% total.

North Las Vegas was host to Hope Now for homeowners in Las Vegas facing foreclosure. They were expecting several thousand homeowners to come to Aliante Station during the 2 day workshop. There were mortgage lenders and counselors offering assistance for the frazzled home owners who have seen huge drops in their property values. Las Vegas is also at a record high unemployment at nearly 12%. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Housing and Urban Development-approved counselors  answered questions for distressed homeowners and possible solutions.

Hope Now helped nearly a quarter million people stay in their homes through loan modifications and repayment plans.

The Nevada Foreclosure Mediation Program has received its first three requests for mediation , two of which are from Clark County, NV. This is a program designed to put homeowners together with their lenders to work out a loan modification in a more efficient time frame.

Nevada Foreclosure Mediation Program began on July 1 under Assembly Bill 149. Mediation’s will be conducted by Senior District Judges or Supreme Court Settlement Judges and some 400 attorneys that have signed up for training to be approved as mediators. The rules and other information about the Foreclosure Mediation Program are available on the Supreme Court website: http://www.nevadajudiciary.us/ . The homeowner and lender will split the 400 fee for the mediator.

Homeowners in Las Vegas facing foreclosure will need to submit all of their financials, past taxes, monthly bills and current income. This is also the same info required to do a short sale. This program is only for homeowners who have received a Notice of Default ( NOD) after July 1, 2009 and the home must be a primary residence.

This program will save a lot of homes for people who want to stay in the home and could afford the new payments if the loan is modified. A short sale is still a good alternative for people who can’t afford the payments, lost a job or have to move from the area.

We have a short sale listing in Las  Vegas with full short sale approval from lien holder. Great right? It was great till the seller went to sign the approval letter where it stated that the lender would 1099 him for the difference.

We make clients well aware at the on set that there could be tax ramifications when doing a short sale. We are real estate agents in Las Vegas and can’t give legally give tax advice. We have specific form that clients sign at the listing of the home that states this very thing.

Bush’s bill in November of last year allowed home owners to sell their primary residence on a short sale with tax ramifications. In other words there is no 1099 issued for the sale of your home on a short sale. Investment properties are a different story. The lenders will issue or at least state they are going to issue a 1099.

This is not a negotiable item. To ask for that is committing tax fraud. I would like to sell the home but I’m not going to prison for it!

Investment property owners can show they are insolvent, meaning they have more debt than assets, and can not afford the tax debt. Again we are not tax attorneys or CPA’s so please talk with someone who can give tax advice. The IRS Form 982 is for investment property owners doing a short sale of there home in Las Vegas or anywhere in the country to show whether or not they are insolvent.

So now we have worked for months to get the approval and the seller is refusing to sign this. If you are doing a short sale there could be tax consequences. Always consult with a CPA on this as instructed by your real estate agent. Before wasting the time of the buyer, buyer and selling agents, loss mitigation personal and lenders involved in closing the deal, make sure you are ready to close the home.

CNBC reports Las Vegas home sales are on a sugar high. Las Vegas short sales and foreclosures consisted of 80% of  June sales. June 2009 had 4,701 closings according Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors. This is better than any other month in the last 5 years. A sugar high or no sugar high, this is weeding us through our problems.

It will get the homeowners out of the homes they can no longer afford, it will get the houses off the banks books, and brand new homeowners who couldn’t of afforded these homes a few short years ago.

Fort Myers, one of Florida’s hardest hit areas and the area I spent my honeymoon, is reporting record sales. New listings have multiple offers within days of listings. Sales  are up 116 % year to date through June and inventory is down to a 3.5-month supply, about a 1/3 of what it was last summer. You can attribute the booming sales to the median price nearly 60% of what it was a year ago.

Rick Shelton, president elect of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors and my former broker before starting i Realty, states in the same CNBC report “(Foreclosed) properties are almost selling faster than we can get inventory,” and “Inventory is extremely depressed.”

When the bubble started in 2004 we had very low rates and inventory. Hopefully this action will help the Las Vegas real estate market recover. The majority of the people thought prices would keep going up. They could have sold their homes then but thought no way its going to keep going up. Now the majority of people are standing on the sidelines thinking prices will keep going down. I feel it is the same way of thinking in both cases.

The perceived value is here, now in the market. It could drop more…..so. If you are buying a home for 100,000 and it drops 10% in the next year, that 10k will cost you about $60 a month. Is living in a rental apartment, with a landlord telling you can’t paint the walls the color you want, no tax write offs and  a HOME that is not yours worth $15 a week?

I don’t think so.

Las Vegas luxury homes are small percentage of short sales in Las Vegas to have closed. Jumbo loans are very difficult to get these days. Jumbo loans are loans between 417,000 to 729,750 are jumbo conforming and are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac backed. Loans over 729,750 are Super Jumbo and are not backed Fannie and Freddie. These higher end loans are a scary bet for lenders because if the borrower defaults it will be difficult to get rid of the property.

Here in Las Vegas, a jumbo loan will get a nice home but in some markets you’ll need a jumbo just to get into a modest home. This price range poses a problem for a recovery to the Las Vegas Real Estate market. With these higher priced homes sitting on the market and not moving, it could drive the prices down in the lower priced market.

Las Vegas Homes closed in June 2009 were 3,701 total single family homes. Luxury homes priced over 500,000 made up 1.8% of the homes closed. There were 67 total units sold in June. Of these 67 homes, 6 of these were Las Vegas short sale homes. That works out to 1 tenth of 1% of the closing were short sales!

Las Vegas has one of the highest percentages of jumbo loans that are 90 or more days delinquent in the entire country. The NAR is pressuring Congress and the Obama administration to increase the jumbo loan limits that Fannie and Freddie will guarantee and make them permanent. Current amounts were raised in 2008 and are set to expire Dec. 31, of this year.

If you are upside down on your Las Vegas luxury home, we may be able to help.

Las Vegas Short Sales.

There are currently 5117 short sales in Las Vegas on the market. This includes Condos in Las Vegas, single family homes in Las Vegas and townhomes. Close to 30% of these homes are priced under 100,000. The majority of the homes are priced between 100,000 to 200,000. That makes up nearly 50% of the short sales in Las Vegas.

Luxury homes in Las Vegas are a small percentage of the market. There are currently 110 homes priced between 500,000 and 1,000,000. These homes would have fetched well over the 1 to 2.5 million at the height of the market.

Click here to download this report.

July_19_2009_Short_Sale_inventory_report

Please contact us to view any of these homes currently on the market and use our site to search for Homes in Las Vegas.

Buyers looking to purchase a home in Las Vegas will be happy to hear we still have foreclosures coming.  Realty Trac reports there were 8,726 notices of default filed in Nevada in June. That is close to a 10% jump between May and June in 2009. In Las Vegas Real Estate, Las Vegas Notice of Defaults dropped from 7,643 in May to 7,335 in June. Notice of defaults and sale dates issued by lenders jumped from 14,681 in May to  15,885 in June. Nevada has led the nation in foreclosures for the first half of the year. We have surpassed Florida, Phoenix and the hardest hit areas of California. It is estimated that everyone 1 in 13 homes in Nevada has recieved a notice of default. A NOD is typically issued after a borrower has missed 3 payments.

The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported a record 4,702 home sales locally in June, with the median price of $140,000 remaining steady from May. The good news is the inventory is getting eaten up once they are on the market. Lenders are working with homeowners on modifications as well. If your purchasing a short sale home, the banks seem to be working through these with a bit more efficiency than compared to a year ago.

Las Vegas Short Sale  homes closed 333 units of single family homes in June of 2009. That comprised 8.9% of all 3,785 homes in Las Vegas that closed last month. The short sale listings that sold in Las Vegas were priced between 18,ooo and 1,600,000. The longest DOM ( days on market)  was 714 days compared 82 days on average from list to contract.  On average, the homes took 2 to 3 months to get bank approval of short sale.

As of  July 17, 2009 their are currently 3,938 short sale single family homes active on the market. This does not include homes in contingent status. There is a total of 9,733 homes on the market. This means 40% of the homes out there are short sale listings in Las Vegas.  With the inventory being depleted, this will mean less days on market for sellers.

If you are looking to list your home as a short sale in Las vegas, chances are you will get a buyer quicker than you would have 6 months ago. This means a quicker time frame of buyers and agents in and out of your home.  Any buyers looking to purchase, will most likely on average write 3 to 5 offers before getting one accepted. A short sale allows a buyer of real estate in Las Vegas, to get a home under contract and just wait an additional couple of months. Buyers can also avoid the headaches and competition on the bank owned homes.

If you are looking to sell your home as a short sale, please contact us and we will help!

The proofs in the pudding

When you start the short sale process, one of the first things a lender will look at, is your financial statements. You will need to submit a breakdown of all of your monthly bills. That would include your car payments, insurance, health insurance, prescriptions, gas, electric, phones, internet, groceries, gasoline, basically everything that costs you money!  You will need to show there are more bills than money coming in every month. There could have been a loss of a job, a spouses hours cut, illness, death or any other imaginable thing that is hindering your ability to make your payments.

The numbers will show it, the hardship letter will explain it and the bank account will prove it. The proof is in the pudding.

You need to back all of this with the proof. You won’t be approved for the short sale if you have a lot of money in the bank and making enough money monthly to cover the bills. A short sale isn’t for the homeowner who is just bummed the home has dropped in value. We’re all there!

This is the opposite of what you need to do if you are going for a loan modification. A misconception of people doing a mod is that when they submit their financials, they make themselves look broke. You need to show that you CAN make the house payments if they give a chance. So you need to tighten the belt and cut back on the 40.00 pizza in and have some hamburger helper! So please if you are trying to save the home, show the money.

If you are honestly hurting you can get the help you need. Be it a short sale , a loan modification or a deed in leiu of foreclosure. The banks are working with people. It’s not on the timeline everyone wants, but they are working on it. If your upside down on the home, call us to see if we can help.

Good news if your looking to list your home as a short sale. Applied Analysis has reported that real estate agents have listed less resale homes. Listings have dipped 36.7% or 8109 units over the last year. Housing inventory has dropped for the 13th consecutive week and vacant home listings have dropped 49% according to Applied Analysis.

What this means if you are considering listing your home as a short sale, it will take considerably less time to list the home and get a an offer. Our short sale listings, typically are receiving multiple offers. This means less intrusion in your home life if we can get your home on the market. Banks are expected to list a new wave of bank owned homes which will change the market. There is no real number of what they are holding.