Financial Markets
The Dow Jones continues its choppy holding pattern near the 12,000 mark, and finished the week at 11,925. The Dow shed nearly 300 points between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning on the heels of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech. Bernanke downgraded the GDP from 3.0% to 2.9% for 2011, mentioned a “frustratingly slow” pace of job growth, and reset the national unemployment rate for the 4th quarter of 2011 to hover between 8.6 and 8.9%, which is up from earlier predictions of 8.4% to 8.7%. The kicker for stocks was the lack of rhetoric for a QE 3 (Quantative Easing) or any extension of the current QE 2.
Southern Nevada Real Estate and Economy
May sales for Southern Nevada were up slightly from April as well as May 2010, with 3,111 recorded sales for Southern Nevada. The median priced home actually increased slightly from $125,000 (April) to $126,000, however that number is down 11% from May 2010. If you take a closer look though, this doesn’t necessarily translate into home depreciation because the number of town homes and condos (880 for May 2011) are up 14.4% from May of 2010, and have an impact on the “median priced home”. The average priced town home and condo for May 2011 is $62,750. If you were to strip out town homes and condos, the median price from May 2010 to May 2011 would be fairly flat. 43.8% of sales were REOs, 23% of sales were short sales and 51.4% of the sales were cash acquisitions. (Data was extracted from the below article in LV Sun)
Below is a link to an article from the Wall Street Journal that discusses how affordable home ownership. It could serve as a great reference for selling points.
Products PRMI is rolling out this month:
· Up to 10 financed properties for investors
· FNMA Home Path up to 90% Loan to Value for investors
