Carson City housing market is heating up

Carson City and nearby communities make up a hot housing market — a sellers’ market, but with buyers who don’t want to overpay, a Dayton-based real estate broker said Wednesday.

“I think Carson City is a hot market right now,” Coldwell Banker broker/manager Jody Foley said during a presentation at Sierra Place, a senior-living center on College Parkway in Carson City. She said her territory includes Carson City and Minden-Gardnerville.

Foley said she suspects that if buyers continue submitting multiple bids, sometimes due to the low inventory, construction will pick up. She added, however, that there aren’t many buildable lots in Carson City, and some resurgence in building will be in outlying areas.

Foley said there isn’t much chance, in her view, that overheated pre-recession prices will return — at least not anytime soon.

“If it got back there anytime soon, I’d be shocked,” she said.

The “there” of which she spoke was $352,000 for an average sale in 2006, she said, just $1,000 higher than the other peak price year of 2005 in Carson City. She said her rearview-mirror statistics covered just Carson City. The average price in 2004 was $292,000, Foley said.

That year was the top for numbers of homes sold in Nevada’s capital city; 757 changed hands.

“It’s been an up-and-down kind of process the last eight or nine years,” she said.

Housing dipped 46 percent during the economic downturn when very few people were buying, she said, but things definitely are on the rise and have been the past couple of years.

“There are a lot of first-time home buyers,” she said, plus others including retirees entering the local market.

The average price in 2012 was $153,000, she said, but it spiked this year and is pushing $205,000. From last year to this year, the more than 20 percent rise doesn’t seem to be slowing sales. She said 252 houses have closed this year, which puts the market on track for another strong year if lack of inventory doesn’t make things sputter.

Low interest rates have helped make housing affordable, Foley said, though they have zipped up to the 5 percent to 5.25 percent range in recent days. Overall, she stayed upbeat about the comeback.

“It’s a very robust real estate market,” she said.