Northern Nevada Housing Market Sags

Experts Call It “A Common Shift,” Homebuyers Call It “A Racket”

The housing market has taken a winter nap, according to Sierra Nevada Realtors, who have now graciously lumped condos and townhomes in with regular houses—presumably so the numbers don’t look quite so pitiful. January saw 49 sales of existing homes, condos, and townhomes, which amounts to a 33.8 percent drop from the previous month—a number that would make any seller feel like they’d been kicked square in the front of their britches. Yet, strangely enough, this was still an improvement over last year because, much like a man drowning in a river who finally finds a floating log, sometimes even bad news looks like progress.

The median sale price in Carson City wobbled down to $550,000, a minuscule 0.7 percent drop from December, which might seem like a silver lining until one remembers that half a million dollars used to buy a mansion with a yard big enough to graze a horse, rather than a two-bedroom home with a yard just big enough to stand in and wonder where all the money went.

Lyon County saw 73 sales, with prices steady at $375,000, proving nothing else save the folks know how to hold a line. Over in Churchill County, 14 sales were recorded, with prices at $376,000, because one more thousand dollars makes all the difference. Douglas County wasn’t so lucky, with only 29 homes sold and prices jumping 9.2 percent over last month but tumbling 10.7 percent from last year, which is the kind of up-and-down excitement one usually expects from a bucking bronco, not a housing market.

Meanwhile, in Washoe County—excluding Incline Village–because everyone knows the real estate market is overpriced around Lake Tahoe—there were 516 new listings and 364 closed sales. The median price slid down to $525,000, a 3.7 percent dip from last month but a 2.9 percent rise from last year. Inventory is up 24.2 percent from last year.

All in all, the housing market remains about as predictable as a desert thunderstorm—which is to say, everybody claims to know what’s coming, but in the end, we all get wet and wonder what happened.