By Hubble Smith LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL Posted: Mar. 8, 2011 | 11:21 a.m. Home "flipping" has become a profitable venture again in Las Vegas now that median prices have retreated to 20-year lows. Prices are bouncing around the bottom, a function of the type of home that's coming on the market, said Paul Bell, president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors. They're primarily smaller, three-bedroom homes purchased for under $100,000, he said. What's missing from that number is the amount of restoration work that goes into making those homes leasable for the long term, the Realtor said. Bell saw a single-story, 2,500-square-foot home in his Spanish Trail neighborhood go to an investor for $130,000 cash. It needed significant restoration, including foundation repair, but was turned around in 120 days and sold for $250,000 cash, he said. Home sales rebounded a bit in February from the previous month while inventory of homes for sale increased to … [Read more...]

Without a house to sell , first-time home buyers have had a field day in the depressed housing market. Until recently, anyway. A series of new rules, regulations and policies have changed the landscape, making buying that new home harder and more expensive. Not long ago, first-time buyers accounted for 40% of home sales. Now they're down to 29% and falling, experts say, as first-time buyers confront a steady accumulation of rising fees, costs, and rates. This month, fees on most new mortgages will rise by up to 0.50%. In April, fees on small-down-payment mortgages, a first-time buyer favorite, will spike. Meanwhile, more lenders are requiring larger down payments, and new proposals from the Obama administration call for mortgages to become more expensive and limited in size. The new fees and higher barriers to entry are all a response to the sweeping mortgage losses of the last several years. Banks and other lenders lost billions of dollars on subprime and other risky … [Read more...]