by Calculated Risk on 8/08/2012 02:23:00 PM

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.

From the GLVAR: GLVAR reports sixth straight month of increasing local home prices,record number of short sales, housing supply bouncing back a bit

According to GLVAR, the total number of local homes, condominiums and townhomes sold in July was 3,572. That’s down from 3,945 in June and down from 4,037 total sales in July 2011.
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Reversing a months-long trend, the total number of homes listed for sale on GLVAR’s Multiple Listing Service increased slightly from June to July, with a total of 16,944 single-family homes listed for sale at the end of the month. That’s up 0.1 percent from 16,930 single-family homes listed for sale at the end of June, but still down 24.5 percent from one year ago.

The number of available homes listed for sale without any sort of pending or contingent offer also rebounded compared to the previous month, but was still down considerably from last year. By the end of July, GLVAR reported 4,293 single-family homes listed without any sort of offer. That’s up 16.3 percent from 3,690 such homes listed in June, but down 60.9 percent from one year ago.
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40 percent of all existing local homes sold during July were short sales, which occur when a lender agrees to sell a home for less than what the borrower owes on the mortgage. That’s up from 34.2 percent in June and the highest short sale percentage GLVAR has ever recorded.

Continuing a trend of declining foreclosure sales in recent months, bank-owned homes accounted for 20.7 percent of all existing home sales in July, down from 27.8 percent in June.

A few key points:
• Even with the slight increase in inventory in July, inventory is still down sharply from a year ago (down 60.9 percent year-over-year for single family homes without contingent offers).

• The decline in sales from the record levels in 2011 (even more sales than during the bubble!) is because of the decline in foreclosures. Some of the recent decline in foreclosures is due to new foreclosure rules in Nevada, but there is also a shift to short sales.

• Short sales are almost double foreclosures now. The GLVAR reported 40 percent of sales were short sales, and only 20.7% foreclosures. We've seen a shift from foreclosures to short sales in most areas (not just in areas with new foreclosure laws).

• The percent distressed sales was extremely high at 60.7% in July (short sales and foreclosures), but that was down from 62% in June.