Southern Nevada real estate prices firming up in February

Las Vegas homeowners should be mildly encouraged about the direction housing prices are going nowadays. Well, they aren't actually going much of anywhere, and that's what's good about it. They have put the breaks on the slide that seemed to go on forever and are seemingly stabilizing. Mortgage borrowers whose property is underwater can now hope that values will soon start heading in the other direction, up that is. And eventually lift them from the painful, wallet-busting submersion, whenever that'll be.

GLVAR, or Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, just released its latest stats for February to show that the median price stood at $135,694, a hard-fought $769 hike from January, or 0.6% improvement. The significance is that it's up at all. It's 12.8% below from February of 2009, though, a stark reminder of how tough the housing and mortgage markets have been, and still are.

Now, altogether 2,390 single-family homes were sold in February, mirroring an 8% drop from the month before. This has got to worry some Las Vegas real estate observers because it's a second consecutive month of decline. Winter season tends to be slower in the housing arena, true, and that might explain it.

The inventory of property for sale grew again over the 20,000 benchmark, registering 20,262 units listed. It's only about 500 higher than in February, so no one should lose sleep over that. Not yet anyway. The positive side here is that it's an 8.5% decrease from the same time last year.

Southern Nevada real estate continues to be embraced by investors, as a lofty 48.7% of sales were cash, when in December this number was "only" 40.4%. Who else can cruise into Sin City and plunk down still-warm greenbacks for houses? That's them. Even though mortgage money is superbly affordable these days, regular buyers looking to snap up property in the lower end of the market can expect to be outshined by these investors.

Las Vegas housing market has now caught a mild case of the flu, normal for winter they say. The figures for February were mixed, demonstrating that soft spots do remain, that a solid recovery is still months away.