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.