By John Sanders – Vice President / Commercial Sales NCS Las Vegas – A Division of Fidelity National Title Group
Tuesday, February 2, 2019 Mortgage expert Mark Baker hosted “Breakfast with Mark Baker”. In the room at Red Rock Country Club were more than 150 business owners, community leaders and top real estate professionals.
Brian Gordon of Applied Analysis and David Brownell of Keller Williams Realty joined Mark to discuss the state of the Las Vegas Residential Real Estate Market. They shared pertinent trends, developments and happenings in Southern Nevada. Here are my Takeaways.
Brian Gordon shared that Nevada continues to lead the nation in population growth at 2.09% annually. The US Average is .62%. Of those moving to Nevada 35.9% are coming from California. The primary reason people are moving to Las Vegas is Jobs (46.1%) and Retirement (29.3%). A little over 40% of those moving here make greater than $100,000 annually.
Brian illuminated – every hour roughly 5 more people move to Las Vegas than move out. That was crazy to me!!
The Takeaways continue…
- Nevada ranks first in job growth at 3.8% annually!
- Currently there are 1,026,900 jobs in Las Vegas!
- There have been 90 consecutive months of positive growth in employment! That’s 7.5 years of positive job growth!!!
- Leisure and Hospitality lead the way, followed by government jobs and construction!
- Finally, Nevada has the fasted Personal Income Growth in the country at 6.21%!
On to the residential real estate market… the median price of $294,600 (Q3 2018) sits right in the middle of the 30 largest MSA’s. What really surprised me was that since 2005 Las Vegas has only seen a 9% growth in home value. By comparison Montana and Utah are close to 90%, Idaho is at 80% and Washington and Colorado are close to 70%.
In a nutshell what Brian said are “the three pillars of a healthy real estate market” are all showing positive signs for the Las Vegas market. Population Growth (#1 in the nation), Job Growth (#1 in the nation), and Wage Growth all great.
Now the cause for concern.
David Brownell shared some fantastic information about our market. My opinion is that there is no one that knows our housing market better than David.
Housing inventory continues to climb with the Average Days on Market being up slightly across the board. The number of closed transactions has been decreasing year over year by 11.6% in November, 18.2 % in December and 19.4% in January.
But what caught my attention most was something David said about Annual Appreciation. He said prices have been pretty much the same since April or May of 2018. In April and May of 2019, year over year appreciation numbers are expected to be much lower. He said that it will be interesting to see how that “sits” with the market.
One other thought shared regarding inventory. There is well over 16 months of supply for properties listed over $1 million. The $500,000 to $1 million segment is seeing roughly six months’ supply.
My final thoughts are this.
My generation only knows two housing markets: crazy on-fire good and the sky is falling bad. If it’s not one, it is bound to be the other, right? I don’t believe so.
While I do believe there will be a pause or a dip – my opinion is that it’s fine. I describe it as an airplane that has taken off, reached its cruising altitude and settling in for the duration of the trip. There may be some turbulence, the plane may change altitude up or down a bit, but auto pilot is on and drinks are being served in the cabin.
Time to relax and enjoy a beverage.
What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts. john.sanders@fnf.com
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