When Ryan Oesterle put his Las Vegas townhouse up for sale last month, he knew the market had warmed up and thought it would only be a week or two before he accepted an offer.
Instead, it only took days before he received a barrage of offers and sold the home for $ 13,000 above price.
Oesterle, a 34-year-old limousine driver, isn’t the only one who has quickly found a buyer recently.
A new report shows that properties are selling fast in southern Nevada, although properties in many other cities are trading even faster, underscoring how insane housing has become throughout the country during the pandemic.
About 51 percent of Las Vegas homes that found buyers in April were sold within a week of launch, according to data from listing site Zillow.
Las Vegas’s share of quick sales was 27th among the 50 metropolitan areas listed in the report. Columbus, Ohio topped the list at 73.8 percent, while 47.3 percent of homes sold nationwide last month were less than one Were listed for a week, Zillow reported.
The report includes homes contracted with buyers, uncompleted sales.
The Las Vegas housing market has accelerated at the fastest pace in years as mortgage rates at rock bottom allow people to make lower monthly payments and stretch their budgets. Buyers inundate properties with offers, often within days of launch, and routinely pay more than the asking price, multiple sources say.
Builders have put buyers on waiting lists; median resale prices hit new all-time highs practically every month; available inventory has dwindled; and overseas buyers, especially Californians, seem to be buying more homes than usual in cheaper Las Vegas as people work from home without commuting.
In the US, homes are selling “very quickly by historical standards,” because of “relentless demand”, Chris Glynn, chief economist at Zillow, told the Review Journal on Monday.
He said demand is strongest in affordable markets that have year-round outdoor amenities. Such areas have already gained popularity, but demand has “increased significantly”, presumably because of the pandemic, he said.
“These are places that really showed up in the last year,” said Glynn.
In southern Nevada, it’s “very common right now” for homes to be sold in less than a week, said Jessica Hallenbeck, a realtor with Signature Real Estate Group.
She listed a two-story home in North Las Vegas this month, received a cash offer the same day, and signed a deal with the buyer the next day, she said.
Realty One Group’s agent Anthony Trincilla said overpriced homes will remain, but if a home is reasonably priced, it can be sold within three to four days of it being available for demonstrations.
Trincilla, a former taxi driver who got into real estate early last year, first listed a home a few months ago. The one-story house in Summerlin was priced at $ 540,000 and was signed to a buyer less than a week after it went public and traded for $ 556,000, stock market history shows.
It had maybe 25 performances in the first two days, Trincilla recalled.
“It was rude,” he said.
Oesterle, the limo driver, recalls making 30 or 40 offers for his townhouse in the southwest, including some within just two hours of it being put up for sale.
The entire sales process was pleasant and smooth, he said, but it felt surreal to get more than one buyer in a matter of hours.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.
