October is here and the Las Vegas housing market is still seeing record breaking numbers! Jen Holba with the Debbie Zois Team shares her insights as to what we can expect to see in the current market.
Good morning, everybody. Jen Holba here with Debbie Zois Team Keller Williams Realty Las Vegas. I realized last night while I was trying to fall asleep, that it had been a minute since I have touched base with you and given you an update on what the real estate market is doing here in Las Vegas.
Like every city that I have spoken to and been in touch with over the last few weeks in the country, the Las Vegas real estate market is on fire.
It is a heavy seller’s market. It feels like we have one house available for every five to seven buyers we have looking to purchase, and we attribute that to these historic low interest rates.
We are still seeing interest rates under 3%, which is phenomenal and buyers wanting to take advantage of it.
That price point under the $400,000 mark is on fire. As buyer’s agents, we are having to really get creative to get our clients’ offers accepted. There’s a lot of competition out there and it’s tough.
So what does that mean for you as a buyer?
It means that we need to be patient. We need to be a little bit more flexible on the absolute wants and needs that we’re looking for, because the lack of inventory is putting on some pressure. If you want to take advantage of these low rates, we need to pull out all the stops and be a little bit more open minded when it comes to what it is that we’re looking for.
In the month of August, according to the Census Bureau, new home sales had a 14 year record high – that’s, right.
They sold more homes in the month of August than they have in the last 14 years. We see it when I show new home construction to buyers that are coming into town. We go in and we have a waiting list that we have to be on.
There’s no inventory that’s available. When they’re looking at these new home sales, we actually get put on a waiting list versus being able to take advantage of what it is that they’re looking for. So we’re experiencing it, but the good news is deals are still being done.
We had a wonderful month of August. I touched base on that a couple of weeks ago, and I had kind of a breath of fresh air over the weekend. I received a call from an old time friend from San Diego. We’ve been friends for over 20 years. She and her husband are moving out to Las Vegas because he is being relocated, through Amazon.
They’re bringing him out here to get ahead of the holiday season and it just reminded me that yes, Las Vegas is based really around hospitality, entertainment, restaurant, nightlife, bars, that sort of thing – which is, is feeling a serious pit due to COVID – but we do have other businesses in town that are going to help us keep our unemployment somewhat down until we can recover from this virus.
It was a light at the end of the tunnel. For me, we’ve been feeling really kind of bogged down because our unemployment rate is high. We have 330,000 people that are out of jobs right now. That’s really staggering. But the good news is we do have other industries in town that are going to help us recover slowly but surely.
So there’s my 2 cents for the week. If you have anything you need real estate or non real estate related, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. Make it a great day!
