Las Vegas Real Estate Investment Update - May 2025 Market Report
In This Report
- The State of the Las Vegas Housing Market - May 2025
- Potential Investment Properties
- Market Trends
- About the FERNWOOD Team
The State of the Las Vegas Housing Market - May 2025
An old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." And indeed, these are (very) interesting times.
In last month's market report, I promised to reexamine the Las Vegas housing market once April data became available. The key question was whether financial market turmoil would affect the dynamics of investment-grade single-family properties in Las Vegas.
In the short term, financial markets are driven by emotions and algorithms. Below is a Trading Economics chart demonstrating the extraordinary volatility during March and April. Investors who acted hastily may have suffered substantial losses.
Given this extreme financial market volatility, I wanted to examine how the Las Vegas housing market is performing.
The following charts from the Las Vegas Realtor MLS show data for all single-family homes (including new construction) priced between $350,000 and $550,000. I chose to analyze this broader market range, rather than just our target property profile, to better show overall market trends.
The first metric is the days on the market (DOM). If people panic or get nervous, they usually pause buying houses, and that will cause homes to stay on the market longer. The DOM is trending downward, following typical seasonal patterns. The market shows strong, healthy activity with a median of 21 days in April.
The next metric is the number of homes under contract. If people pause buying homes, the number of homes under contract would decline. The number of homes under contract (being sold) had a slight decline from March to April (from 1294 to 1246, or a 3.7% decrease), showing that a few buyers have taken a wait-and-see approach.
The next indication of buyers leaving the market would be increasing inventory. The number of homes for sale in this price range showed a very modest increase from 2,864 in March to 2,911 in April (a 1.6% increase).
Similarly, the months of supply increased slightly from 2.6 months in March to 2.7 months in April.
A 6-month supply indicates a balanced market where the number of buyers roughly equals the number of sellers and the prices remain stable. With only 2.7 months of supply and no significant increase in inventory, prices are likely to continue rising.
What has happened with $/SF? As you can see, prices continue to increase.
Lastly, since mortgage rates greatly affect the housing market, I looked up Freddie Mac’s mortgage rates tracker. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is on a downward trajectory since mid-January 2025 but remains largely stable. This means mortgage rates were not a significant market driver during March and April. If the rates come down, it will be a strong tailwind for the housing market. I will do a deeper analysis of the mortgage rate trend in a future blog.
Conclusion
Based on the available data, the Las Vegas housing and the mortgage markets appear unaffected by the recent financial market turmoil caused by tariffs and other factors. The housing market continues to follow typical seasonal patterns. Given the current low inventory (2.7 months) and short days-on-market figures, I anticipate that prices will continue to rise in the near term.
This finding demonstrates real estate’s inherent stability, which is attractive to investors seeking to mitigate risks while enjoying significant growth.
If you're interested in exploring how the current Las Vegas market conditions could align with your goals, please use the link below to schedule a time that works best for you.
Potential Investment Properties
Below is a link to this month's list of candidate investment properties. Our proprietary data mining software selected these candidate properties from thousands of available properties, and this is just the first step in our multi-step validation process, as shown below.
This Month’s List of Candidate Properties
Market Trend
Below are charts from our latest trailing 13-month market report, which includes April data. Remember that this data is only for our target property profile, not the entire metro area. To see all the charts, please click here.
Rentals - Median $/SF by Month
Rents increased MoM, in line with our expectations. YoY is flat.
Rentals - Median Time to Rent by Month
Median time to rent continued to decrease rapidly in April, now just above 20 days. This is in line with our expectations for the time of the year.
Rentals - Availability by Month
The number of homes for rent continued to decrease MoM, in line with our expectations.
Rentals - Months of Supply
Only about 0.9 month of supply for our target rental property profile. This low inventory will continue to pressure up rents.
Sales - Median $/SF by Month
The $/SF had a marginal drop MoM (from $262 to $261). YoY is up 6.1%.
Sales - List to Contract Days by Month
Median days on the market continue to drop rapidly MoM, now about 19 days, indicating a strong demand even during the height of the financial market turmoil.
Sales - Availability by Month
This chart shows the average daily number of properties for sale in a particular month. There was a slight increase MoM.
Sales - Months of Supply
There are about 1.9 months of supply for our target property profile. A 6 months supply is considered a balanced market. This limited inventory will likely continue to drive up prices.
About the FERNWOOD Team
We Help Investors Build Wealth through Strategic, Data-driven Real Estate Investments in Las Vegas.
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For the last 17+ years, we've helped clients build highly reliable, passive income streams through real estate that they will not outlive. Several are now retired and living entirely on their rental income. Most never invested in real estate before they started working with us, and most live in other states or countries. Below is a two-minute video of the services we provide.
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