The Las Vegas real estate market continues to be one of the most distressed areas in the entire nation, with home sales continuing to decline and foreclosure rates remaining at extremely high levels. According to a May 10, 2010 article in the Las Vegas Sun, “The federal tax credit designed to spur home sales appears to have ended on a whimper in Las Vegas and may foretell a downturn in the housing market in the coming months, analysts said. The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported Monday that sales in April fell 7 percent compared to March and dropped nearly 8 percent compared to April 2009.”

The piece, composed by Buck Wargo, continued to say that “The drop off in the year-over-year sales is the first since March 2008. The decline was unexpected since April was the last month for buyers to sign contracts for new and existing homes. Dennis Smith, president of Home Builders Research, who monitors the Southern Nevada housing market, said he believes the drop off in sales is a reflection of the declining amount of foreclosure properties in the market.” The only potential bright spot for the Las Vegas real estate market was a slight increase in home prices as reported by Fox 5 News.

The extremely high rate of foreclosures facing Las Vegas homes for sale was reported in an April 29, 2010 article in the Atlantic. This piece said that “Maybe they should call it Foreclosure City instead of Sin City. Las Vegas was again the source of the highest foreclosures density in the U.S. during the first quarter, according to a new RealtyTrac report documenting foreclosure rates in the 209 largest metropolitan statistical areas. It had an incredible one foreclosure for every 28 properties. That’s even worse than Nevada’s overall 1-in-33 foreclosure rate for the quarter. The city’s foreclosure density was also nearly 5x the national average.” The article, written by Daniel Indiviglio, continued to say that “Las Vegas is a prototypical example of this phenomenon. It has 19% fewer foreclosures than a year earlier, but 13% more than a quarter earlier.”