Homeowners in Las Vegas are on the move, with the city leading the nation in the growth of new home listings.
New listings in the high desert city rose 12.8 percent in August from a year earlier, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported, the largest increase in the U.S. based on figures from Redfin. The total number of listings was not disclosed.
The spike in new listings led San Diego’s 11.7 percent and Sacramento’s 9.5 percent. New listings fell most in Atlanta, with a drop of 19.4 percent.
While some real estate experts attribute the uptick to local growth, with an influx of residents moving over the border from high-cost California, others say lower interest rates may be encouraging local residents to step up to newer homes.
The growth of Las Vegas is tangible, Merri Perry, president of the Las Vegas Realtors, told the Review-Journal.
Witness the success of professional sports teams, the pending relocation of the Athletics from Oakland and planned projects such as a Sony movie studio in Summerlin, she said.
“Everyone is coming here,” Perry told the newspaper. “I’ve had a lot of cash buyers come in, and a lot of Californians are coming because prices are so high they can sell their property and pay cash here and have a big nest egg because everything in Las Vegas is cheaper.”
Some 158,000 people moved to Nevada from California from 2020 through last year, making up 43 percent of all new residents to the Silver State during the past four years, according to the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.
Shay Stein, a Las Vegas-based real estate agent with Redfin, speculated that greater Las Vegas leads the nation in new residential listings because of timing. A lower cost of borrowing has allowed local residents to satisfy a yearning to move.
“Las Vegas has a transience by nature, so I am not surprised that with the lower interest rates homeowners are jumping on the opportunity to possibly sell and either move out or buy the home they have been waiting for,” Stein told the Review-Journal.
“Since the interest rates started going up a few years ago and the market constricted, there has been a pent-up demand of homeowners who want to sell, but don’t want to give up their 3 to 4 percent mortgages.”
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Mike Roland, a real estate agent based in Henderson, southeast of Las Vegas, said he has seen a marked change in the market.
“The sellers are popping up all over,” said Roland, who runs the Roland Team at Platinum Real Estate in Henderson. “Seems like the market might be shifting pretty rapidly, which is welcome since we desperately need the inventory.”
— Dana Bartholomew