by Calculated Risk on 3/12/2014 09:24:00 AM

This is a key distressed market to follow since Las Vegas has seen the largest price decline of any of the Case-Shiller composite 20 cities.

The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported GLVAR reports increasing home prices, slower sales

GLVAR said the total number of existing local homes, condominiums and townhomes sold in February was 2,518, down from 2,565 in January and down from 3,232 one year ago.
...
GLVAR continued to chart the transition from distressed to more traditional home sales, where lenders are not controlling the transaction. GLVAR has been reporting fewer short sales – which occur when lenders allow borrowers to sell a home for less than what they owe on the mortgage. For instance, in February, 14 percent of all existing local home sales were short sales, down from 17 percent in January. Another 12 percent of all February sales were bank-owned properties, up from 11 percent in January.

GLVAR said 46.8 percent of all existing local homes sold in February were purchased with cash. That’s unchanged from January, but down from a peak of 59.5 percent set in February 2013.
...
The total number of properties listed for sale on GLVAR’s Multiple Listing Service in February was 13,624. That’s up 0.6 percent from 13,537 single-family homes listed for sale at the end of January, but down 3.5 percent from 14,120 homes one year ago. ...

By the end of February, GLVAR reported 6,316 single-family homes listed without any sort of offer. That’s down 3.4 percent from 6,541 such homes listed in January, but still a 107.3 percent jump from one year ago.
emphasis added

There are several key trends that we've been following:

1) Overall sales were down about 22% year-over-year.

2) Conventional sales are up 11% year-over-year.  In February 2013, only 51.9% of all sales were conventional.  This year, in February 2014, 74% were conventional. 

3) The percent of cash sales is down year-over-year (investor buying appears to be declining).

4) and most interesting right now is that non-contingent inventory (year-over-year) is now increasing rapidly.  Non-contingent inventory is up 107.3% year-over-year (more than double)!

Inventory has clearly bottomed in Las Vegas (A major theme for housing last year).  And fewer distressed sales and more inventory means price increases will slow (a major theme for 2014).