Index Numbers Pointing Downwards for Vegas Housing

By Alex Girda, Associate Editor

Las Vegas is actively looking to turn its luck around with a series of measures designed to spark the real estate market. After reporting on ideas such as providing the necessary incentives for corporations to relocate HQs to the area and large corporations like Zappos getting ready to infuse downtown with new life, it is time for the unforgiving figures of the Standard & Poor’s Case Shiller home price index.

The report, focusing on the top 20 U.S. cities, indicates that Las Vegas is well on its way… down. Housing prices continue to drop. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index value for Las Vegas stands at 95.18. Each tracked city is assigned a value of 100 in January 2000; so, for example, a 150 figure means that the market has increased 50% compared to values recorded in January 2000. This was not the case with Las Vegas.

In fact, Las Vegas has reverted to October 1998 levels after a 0.3 percent drop in prices from July to August confirms the dire state in which the housing market finds itself in the aftermath of the worst bubble burst in recorded history.