The Center for Regional Studies has released the 1st quarter 2010 housing sales data for Washoe County and, for the most part, the numbers look like a repeat of the previous several months. The good news is that, although prices are generally still falling, the rate of descent has slowed down over the last few months. In the first quarter 2010, the median price of new and existing single-family homes sold in Washoe County was $180,000, down 14% from a year earlier. Up until very recently, year-over-year declines of 25-30% were the norm, so this is indeed progress. 
Also of note is the recent uptick in condo sales in the Reno-Sparks area. New and existing condo sales were up 114% in the first quarter compared to last year, and up 5% from the fourth quarter 2009. With a median sale price of just $85,000, the condo market is almost certainly bringing in buyers who would otherwise be renting a place in town at a higher rate than what the mortgage would be on one of these value-priced alternatives. Still, only a handful of new condo units were sold in the past year, so almost all of this perceived strength in the condo market is coming from sales of existing units.
And, really, that’s the same story for new single family homes: there have been so few new homes sold in the past year that they almost don’t even register on the sales charts. For an area that normally could absorb 4,000 to 5,000 new single family units in a year, the past year saw barely more than 500 new units sold — that’s a dramatic shift in the market that could take years for area home builders to recover from.
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