Financial Markets
The Dow Jones gained nearly 250 points for the week, providing distance to the 12,000 threshold it seemed to be stuck on and ended the week at 12,657. However, Friday’s national jobs report put a damper on the overall weekly gains. June’s unemployment report unveiled that only 18,000 jobs were created and missed estimates by over 100,000. The private sector created 57,000 jobs while the public sector (government jobs) lost 39,000 jobs, so the silver lining is that the growth is coming from business owners and not over bloated government spending. The national unemployment rate ticked up to 9.2%.
Mortgage rates have remained fairly flat, bouncing between mid to upper 4% for 30 year fixed mortgages.
Southern Nevada Real Estate and Economy
June sales for single family homes in Southern Nevada reached over 3,600 for the month which is up from nearly 3,000 in May (16.7%) and up roughly 300 (8%) from June 2010. Another 911 condos/townhomes closed escrow as well, bringing the total to 4,540 sales for the month of June. According to the article below, this is the 3rd highest number of existing home sales ever recorded! 50% of the sales were paid with cash and the median priced home dropped from $126,000 to $124,500. Last, there was a reported 22,702 homes listed on the MLS. Below is the article in the LV Sun in its entirety.
Below is a brief article that lists the top 15 worst real estate markets in the US, and Las Vegas is not on it!
July is a great time to take a snap shot and analyze my performance so far for 2011. Some interesting statistics so far:
· 20% of the clients I provided financing for so far this year were borrowers that were declined by previous lenders
· The average transaction took 29.6 days to close (We are constantly improving to lower this number)…The quickest being 11 days.
· Over 90% of the clients I provided financing for involved purchasing a home (as opposed to refinancing).
