Ready for Whiplash?

You'll see by my profile that I'm an Arizona agent primarily working the outer areas around Las Vegas, Kingman, White Hills, Golden Valley etc... however I'm also a Las Vegas agent. With that I'm always watching, reading and checking out articles and news reports here in Vegas. One of the last reports I saw this week on the housing market is that Las Vegas can expect to have a shortage of homes by the end of 2008 and into 2009. Why? The number of new residents coming to Vegas and the number of permits that new home builders are pulling.

It's a crazy number, we have anywhere from 4000 to 7000 people moving to Vegas a month (depending on who you get the info from... these numbers came from 2 seperate articles in the 2007 edition of the Urban Land magazine and the news report). I also know that based on the number of rooms expected to be completed, 40,000 +/- that based on historical analysis about 240,000 new jobs are going to be created in Vegas in the next 3 years. And the other half is that developers are doing everything they can do just to get rid of existing inventory and they've dramatically slowed on the number of residential permits they've pulled.

We have on the local MLS right now approximately 28,000 single family, condos and townhomes and when you count another 7000-10000 homes that the builders have you're looking at 38,000 homes that need to be absorbed. When you add to these the number of homes likely to be on the MLS between now and then we're looking at about 60,000 homes and about 60,000new residents conservatively moving to Vegas in the next year.

2-3 years ago we had a market condition where there were about 1200 to 1500 homes on the market. Prices went nuts. Now getting back to the title. The media has been reporting doom and gloom, subprime, foreclosures escalating, "going to get worse from here" etc. Local areas depending on conditions may be looking at a swing in the opposite direction and could give everyone whiplash (in Vegas).

We may look back in a year and see it go either way. Good luck everyone.

Dave Kreitel
http://www.mohavecoland.com/
http://www.mohavevu.com/