The Case-Shiller home price indices were released yesterday. Nearly all 20 cities experienced a decline. The reading is from August. The Las Vegas aggregate index saw a .1% increase. Of course, when you are dealing with increases this small and measurement error, the true population of prices could be anything. Up, down or flat. Nevertheless, it was actually surprising that it did not slide down further. There may be some lingering support from the homebuyer tax credit extensions (which went until Sept 30). In addi... read more

Clark County gaming revenues leapt month-over-month by over 16%. That is the second month-over-month gain this year and a 13.8% increase year-over-year. Naturally there is a random component to all of this so we cannot say it is a trend. We need a few more months before I would call it a recovery. Pronouncements by the public gaming firms are going to be enthusiastic but are not likely to be jubilent as they need to balance nice looking projections against a backdrop of shaky national economic news. Bloomberg i... read more

We have just concluded our study of commercial real estate trends in Las Vegas. There are several takeaways from the report.     Distressed properties, reflect weakened fundamentals and deleveraging, leading prices downward.    Industrial buildings are approaching the same price-per-square foot that they were near the beginning of the decade.    Many office sector businesses have downsized or gone out of business and the existing demand seems to be comi... read more

Yesterday, Standard & Poor's released the S & P/Case-Shiller home price indices. Major news outlets were all over the place when quoting these. Some said it went up, some down, some sideways. I would like to highlight a few features of these indices: -There are seasonally adjusted and non-adjusted indices. Standard & Poor's, in a technical bulletin, recommends against using the seasonally adjusted series because it can misinterpret variations in the choppy real estate markets with seasonality. -S &a... read more

David Leonhardt had an interesting post in the New York Times business section today. He provides an exibit of home prices against mortgage rates. As you can see from his chart, the relationship is not very close, that is they are not cointegrated. The relationship betweent the two series is not direct, presumably because the borrowing rate is not the only variable people need to think about prior to their home purchase. Job growth, family size, comparable rents and other factors are mixed in there too. Nevertheles... read more