Las Vegas Real Estate in May: Year-over-year Inventory decline slows sharply

This is a key distressed market to follow since Las Vegas has seen the largest price decline of any of the Case-Shiller composite 20 cities.

The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported GLVAR says local housing market, prices heating up

GLVAR said the total number of existing local homes, condominiums and townhomes sold in May was 3,884. That’s up from 3,789 in April, but down from 4,134 total sales in May 2012. ...
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In May, 31.8 percent of all existing local home sales were short sales, down from 32.5 percent in April. Another 10.3 percent of all May sales were bank-owned properties, up from 10.0 percent of all sales in April. The remaining 57.9 percent of all sales were the traditional type, which was up from 57.5 percent in April.
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The total number of properties listed for sale on GLVAR’s Multiple Listing Service decreased in May, with 13,814 single-family homes listed for sale at the end of the month. That’s down 0.5 percent from 13,881 single-family homes listed for sale at the end of April..

As for available homes listed for sale without any sort of pending or contingent offer by the end of May, GLVAR reported 3,297 single-family homes listed without any sort of offer. That’s up 4.3 percent from 3,161 such homes listed in April, but still down 13.2 percent from one year ago.
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In May, GLVAR reported that 57.9 percent of all existing local homes sold were purchased with cash. That’s down from 59.3 percent in April and just off the peak of 59.5 percent set in February.
emphasis added

There are several key trends that we've been following:

1) Overall sales are down year-over-year, but ...

2) Conventional sales are up sharply.  In May 2012, only 32.7% of all sales were conventional.  This year, in May 2013, 57.9% were conventional.  That is an increase in conventional sales of about 66% (of course this is heavily investor buying, but that is still quite an increase in non-distressed sales).

3)  Most distressed sales are short sales instead of foreclosures (about 3 to 1).

4) and probably most interesting right now is that the decline in non-contingent inventory (year-over-year) has slowed sharply.  Non-contingent inventory is only down 13.2% year-over-year compared to a year-over-year inventory decrease of 66.3% reported in May 2012.  Last month, GLVAR reported a year-over-year decline of 24.1%.  It appears the year-over-year inventory decline will be in single digits in June!

This suggests inventory is near a bottom in Las Vegas (A major theme for housing in 2013).