Normally I don't really keep track of statistical information concerning the amount of homes that close, average prices, etc.. for the Las Vegas market as a whole.  There are plenty of people that do this and often times you can read about this in the media about what already happened.  I tend to be more concerned in certain segments of the market and finding value for my clients and tracking current trends for my sellers.  Personally, comparing today to what happened last year makes for some great media reporting but has little use for what is going on right now at this moment.  Somewhere though I was reading a Las Vegas Review Journal report about the number of sales in Las Vegas going down 32% for December of 2006 compared to December of 2005. 

I don't know what spurred me to do it but I jumped on the MLS and just did a quick closing report for Las Vegas homes over 1 million dollars that closed in February of 2007 and was quite stunned by what I saw.

42 homes closed escrow that sold for over $1 Million dollars.  (Resales -- not including new.) I could be off one or two because quite honestly I did not sit there and detail them out.  At the top of the list was a penthouse at Turnberry Towers that had been listed since 8/9/2005 that closed escrow for $3,895,000.

What was stunning to me was it was not too long ago that this many million dollar homes in Las Vegas did not sell in a year.  I remember when my wife sold her first first million dollar Las Vegas home in Palisades back in 2000 and remembering the feeling that we were on top of the real estate world since not too many of these sold in a year.  The latest stats reaffirm just how far Las Vegas has come along in the world of Luxury real estate in what we consider a pretty short time frame.  (That million dollar home sale seems like yesterday to us!)

Looking back at what has happened in the past couple of years for Las Vegas, we consider the current meltdown as the media likes to report it as just returning back to normal.  Real estate is valued by it's uniqueness and for the 42 buyers who just closed escrow, their purchase was well worth the money.