Steady as she goes...

Southern Nevada homebuilders reported another solid week of traffic and sales activity to our Weekly Traffic & Sales Watch for the week ending May 19th.  Over the past month we have reported the same weekly averages for both buyer traffic and net sales per project.  As we have mentioned over the past few weeks, we are seeing comparable activity in 2019 to what was reported in 2017, which is a positive sign in our view.  While early figures from 2018 were very strong, activity tapered off continually throughout the year and overall net sales ended up lower than 2017.  If this consistent activity can be sustained through the second quarter, 2019 should turn out well despite the concerns raised back in January.

Overall sales were sprinkled across the group of local builders with 85 percent reporting at least one sale.  Pulte/Del Webb was the leader in terms of average sales per project with Beazer Homes and Richmond American also reporting strong average sales figures.  Beazer's attached project near Nellis Air Force Base "The Cliffs at Dover" was the most prolific seller of the week followed by two 55+ projects, Heritage by Lennar in the Cadence master planned community in Henderson and Del Webb's Sun City Mesquite.  This is a bit interesting that none of these top three are traditional detached projects and none are in the southwest sub-market. 

Something many people ask us about is the number of standing inventory homes sitting vacant across the valley, often referred to as 'specs'.  For our purposes we classify these as "any unsold unit that is 30 days (or less) from the certificate of occupancy."  Traditionally, 'spec building' has not been a practice done on a large scale in our market compared to some others around the country (pre-crisis bubble period excluded).  While we have seen an increase of 27 percent from the end of 2018 to now, the total figure is still nothing to be alarmed about.  Compared to weekly sales totals there is still only about two weeks of 'standing inventory' out there at any given time.  This figure has remained consistent for roughly 36 months now.  The graph below shows the trend of reported 'standing unsold inventory' new homes taken from the Weekly Traffic & Sales Watch going back to 2017. 

 The only new community reporting to us this week was Hyde Park from Beazer Homes in North Las Vegas.  Located near Craig and Simmons, the 39 lot community boats price per square foot values averaging $132, a figure 27 percent lower that the average for the entire market and 11 percent lower than the North Las Vegas average.

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