The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported that the year’s trend of increasing home sales combined with falling prices continued in April. Again, to no one’s surprise, the driver of these trends is the fact that more than half of all homes sold last month were either bank-owned or short sales. The median price of a single family home fell 3 percent from March to April, and is down a whopping 22.7 percent from April of 2007.

The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported Monday that home sales increased by nearly 12 percent in February, marking a two-month streak in sales growth.But dig deeper, and you’ll find what is likely driving the sales growth: continued fire sale prices. The medium home price fell again in February, albeit slightly (1.4 percent), driven by a large number of short-sales and banks frantically dropping prices on foreclosed homes. (more…)

SalesTraq reported the median price for new homes in the valley in August was $309,241, 13 percent below its peak in April 2006. The median existing-home price was $270,000 in August, down 6.8 percent from its June 2006 peak.

The prices of new and existing homes have been steadily dropping in Las Vegas since mid-2006 and likely will continue to plummet.

That’s according to several professional traders and national economists monitoring the valley’s real estate market. Futures contracts on the housing market that trade on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange indicate Las Vegas is sliding toward the country’s largest price decline. Some are predicting as much as a 20-percent drop in home prices by 2010.

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