Las Vegas leads nation in glut of homes for sale, say Realtors

By Dana Gentry

Nevada Current

A national increase in the inventory of homes for sale is most pronounced in Las Vegas, where the number of listings without offers is up 77 percent over last year, according to a report that asserts retirees are fleeing the valley as homes flood the market.

Washington, D.C. has the second largest spike in inventory (+63.6 percent) followed by Raleigh, N.C. (+56.4 percent), says the report from the National Association of Realtors. Nationwide, the number of homes for sale is up 28.9 percent.

Las Vegas Realtors reported last week that at the end of June, 6,992 single-family homes for sale had no offers, a 70 percent increase from a year ago. The 2,564 condos and townhomes without offers in Southern Nevada account for an 87.6 percent jump over 2024.

Sales in June were down 7 percent from a year ago and the average home is staying on the market for more than 30 days, with about 80 percent selling within 60 days.

While housing stock is up over last year, it remains well below pre-pandemic levels.

“It’s been some time since we had this many homes on the market,” says Jeff Crampton, a Las Vegas Realtor, noting that 6,000 to 10,000 properties for sale is a healthy market.

Two factors, he says, are “keeping buyers on the shelf. One is the interest rates, and the other is the unsettling financial news on our TV every freaking day. Tariffs. No tariffs. War. No war. When people are going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on something, they want certainty.”

Some borrowers are attempting to cushion the blow of higher interest rates by taking on adjustable rate mortgages, which offer a lower rate for an initial period — usually five years — and increase periodically after that.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that for the week ending April 11, 2025, the share of borrowers applying for ARMs rose to its highest level since November 2023.

“Given the jump in rates, more borrowers are opting for the lower initial rates that come with an ARM, with initial fixed rates closer to 6 percent in our survey last week,” Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s SVP and chief economist, said in a press release.

However, ARMs are riskier than 30-year fixed rate loans, which are set about a point higher.

Experts warn the market’s woes are a harbinger of economic disarray.

“Housing will … soon be a full-blown headwind to broader economic growth, adding to the growing list of reasons to be worried about the economy’s prospects later this year and early next,” Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi wrote Monday in posts on X and Linkedin. “Home sales, homebuilding, and even house prices are set to slump unless mortgage rates decline materially from their current near 7 percent soon. “

President Donald Trump is calling for a decrease in the benchmark interest rate, currently at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent, to 1 percent, a move economists fear would trigger another set of economic woes, including higher inflation.

The inflation rate ticked up in June, pushing the annual rate to 2.7 percent, the highest since February. The likely cause, experts say, is Trump’s tariffs.

The price is right?

The U.S. housing market has no shortage of would-be buyers, evidenced by a 25 percent year-to-year increase in purchase applications, HousingWire reports. While some sellers are holding out for top dollar, many homes are priced right, experts contend.

“Normally, if a listing is priced too high, you’re not getting showings for it,” observes Crampton. “I’ve had 13 showings for one house, and I’ve had 19 showings for another house, but just one offer between them.”

The dearth of offers, he says, is evidence of a lack of confidence among buyers who are not balking at home prices, but at the long term costs of financing.

Home prices have been “pretty stable so far this year,” LVR President George Kypreos said in a news release last week, adding the increase in homes for sale “is good for buyers. It should also be prompting sellers to be realistic when pricing their properties.” Kypreos was not available for an interview.

The median price of an existing single-family home sold in Southern Nevada in June was $485,000. That’s up 1 percent from the previous month, up 2.1 percent from last year, and ties the record set during the first quarter.

In Washoe County (excluding Incline Village) the median sales price for existing single-family homes was $616,400 in June, up 3.8 percent from May and 2.7 percent from last year. Inventory was up 7.7 percent from May and 46 percent from a year ago.

But home prices, which have held up amid sagging sales, “have gone sideways and are set to fall,” projects Zandi of Moody Analytics.

Price reductions last week in Southern Nevada were up 95 percent over last year, says real estate agent Diane Varney. “We appreciated too quickly during Covid. We’re in a correction. We needed one. “

Prices, however, remain at record levels. Varney says that’s because the Multiple Listing Service no longer reports seller concessions, resulting in skewed data on sale prices. “If you sell a house for $750,000 and there was a $25,000 to $50,000 concession for repairs, rate buy down, closing costs — anything like that — it’s not going to show up in the sale price at the end of the day.”

Agents, Varney says, get calls from appraisers “all the time” because they need the information to determine the true value of comparable properties.

Even new home builders, who have bought down interest rates as a means of buoying sales, are giving up, according to Zandi.

“It’s simply too expensive,” he wrote Monday. “A big tell is that many builders are delaying their land purchases from the land banks. New home sales, starts, and completions will soon fall.”

Those who are attempting to sell in the current market are likely facing a life-altering event, such as marriage, divorce, or the addition of a child, according to Crampton and Varney.

“It’s not ‘I may want to sell.’ It’s not ‘if I can get my price I’ll sell, otherwise, I’m going to stay here.’ Those players are out of the game,” Varney says of non-motivated sellers.

Complicating matters, one in five deals is falling out of escrow, she says.

“With the inventory climbing, buyers see another home that came on the market that’s more attractive, or maybe the rates took a spike, and they cancel,” says Varney. “Buyers right now are real touchy.”

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Dana Gentry is a native Las Vegan and award-winning investigative journalist. She is a graduate of Bishop Gorman High School and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.