by Calculated Risk on 2/11/2013 04:13:00 PM

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 (GLVAR) reported (Most data via Tom Lawler):

• Residential home sales by realtors in the Las Vegas metro area totaled 2,821 in January, down 21.4% from last January’s pace

• Bank-owned properties were 12.5% of last month’s sales, down from 45.5% last January, while last month’s short-sales share were 36.2%, up from 28.1% a year ago.

• All-cash transactions were 56.2% of last month’s sales, up from 52.5% last January.

• Total listings in January totaled 17,910, down 0.9% from December and down 23.1% from a year ago. However single family home listings without offers were down over 58% from a year ago. A large number of the homes listed for sales are "short sale pending".

• Short sales are about three times foreclosures now. We've seen a shift from foreclosures to short sales in most areas (not just in areas with new foreclosure laws).  Note: Some of the surge in short sales last month might have been due to sellers pushing to beat the expiration of the Mortgage Debt Relief Act of 2007, and there was a decline in January.  The Act  was extended as part of the fiscal deal, so the number of short sales should remain high in 2013.

• The decline in overall sales is because of fewer foreclosure sales. As the market slowly recovers, the number of distressed sales should fall and the number of conventional sales should rise. 

Overall this is a slowly improving distressed market. Note: The median price was up 27.1% from a year ago, but I suggest using the repeat sales indexes because the median is impacted by the mix.