Wednesday: Mortgage Applications, Pending Home Sales Index

Just an update ... during the recession, I wrote about the troubles in Las Vegas and included a chart of visitor and convention attendance: Lost Vegas.

Since then Las Vegas visitor traffic recovered to a new record high in 2012.

However convention attendance in 2012 was still about 21% below the peak level in 2006.  Here is the data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.  


Click on graph for larger image.

The blue bars are annual visitor traffic (left scale), and the red line is convention attendance (right scale).   The numbers for 2013 are a projection based on data through June.

So far this year - through June - there were 19.9 million visitors to Las Vegas - slightly less than for the first six months of 2012. 

Convention attendance was at 2.9 million during the first half of 2013, for a pace over 5 million for the first time since 2008 - but still well below the record of 6.3 million in 2006.

Wednesday:
• 7:00 AM ET, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index. With higher mortgage rates, the refinance index has fallen sharply over the last few months. The key will be to watch the purchase application index.

• At 10:00 AM, the NAR will release the Pending Home Sales Index for July. The consensus is for a 1.0% decrease in the index.