by Calculated Risk on 2/10/2014 12:18:00 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.

The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported GLVAR reports home prices started 2014 where they left off in 2013

GLVAR said the total number of existing local homes, condominiums and townhomes sold in the traditionally slow month of January was 2,527, down from 2,915 in December and down from 2,821 one year ago....
...
GLVAR has been reporting fewer foreclosures and short sales – which occur when a lender agrees to sell a home for less than what the borrower owes on the mortgage. For instance, in January, 17 percent of all existing local home sales were short sales, down from 20.7 percent in December. Another 11 percent of all January sales were bank-owned properties, up from 8.5 percent in December.

GLVAR said 46.3 percent of all existing local homes sold in January were purchased with cash. That’s up from 44.4 percent in December, 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 January was 13,537. That’s up 1.8 percent from 13,303 single-family homes listed for sale at the end of December, but down 6.2 percent from 14,433 homes one year ago. ...

GLVAR reported many more available homes listed for sale without any sort of pending or contingent offer. By the end of January, GLVAR reported 6,541 single-family homes listed without any sort of offer. That’s down 0.7 percent from 6,587 such homes listed in December, but still up 96.2 percent from one year ago.
emphasis added

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

1) Overall sales were down about 10.4% year-over-year.

2) Conventional sales are up solidly year-over-year.  In January 2013, only 51.3% of all sales were conventional.  This year, in January 2014, 72% were conventional.  That is an increase in conventional sales of about 26% year-over-year.

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 96.2% year-over-year!

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.