With investors buying houses and hacking down the inventory, the price of distressed homes is rising faster in Nevada than in any other state, a new report shows.
Nevada homes that were bank-owned or headed toward foreclosure sold for an average $144,182 in the three months ending March 31, up 22.71 percent from a year earlier, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac.
Kansas was a close second to Nevada, with the price rising 22.57 percent this past year to $143,626. Nationally, such homes sold for an average $167,095 last quarter, up 3 percent from a year earlier.
Nevada’s price increase comes amid shrinking availability and sales volume. A total of 4,512 distressed homes — meaning they had been seized by lenders, scheduled for auction or slapped with a notice of default — were sold statewide last quarter, down 63 percent from a year earlier.
Practically every house listed for sale in Las Vegas — distressed or otherwise — gets multiple offers, and prices are rising. That’s due in part to the seemingly endless appetite of cash buyers to turn cheap homes into rentals, according to brokers and analysts.
The median price of a previously owned single-family home sold in April in the valley was $167,000, up almost 31 percent from a year earlier, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported.
Meanwhile, roughly 13,900 single-family homes were listed for sale at the end of April on the GLVAR’s listing service, down 22 percent from a year earlier.