Reno Real Estate Now Stable, Lifted by New Property Sales, Price Slowdown

Reno’s real estate market has crashed really badly during the recession, but as housing prices hit a plateau since June and housing starts increase in the city, experts believe it has entered a more stable state, Reno Gazette-Journal reported.

According to the Journal, home prices in Reno-Sparks have “been stuck to a holding pattern in the $250,000” signaling market stability. Realtors say it marks the beginning of a continuous recovery for the Nevada property market as a whole.

"Stabilization is the trend for home pricing in Northern Nevada and Nevada as a whole," Peter Counts, a graduate assistant from the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told the Journal. The institute publishes a regular housing report with the help of the Nevada Department of Business and Industry.

Local realtors also believe that the market is now “more normal.”

“From 2008 to 2012, we had so many distressed properties that we did not see the traditional winter slowdown we've seen in the 20 years before that,” Mark Ashworth, Reno/Sparks Association of Realtors (RSAR) president, told the Journal. “I believe this is a sign that we're returning to our traditional market.”

Housing starts also indicate that the market is healthy. Citing data from Metrostudy, the report said that Reno saw 1,387 new residential constructions during the previous quarter, representing a 43 percent increase during the same period in 2013.

Yet only 36 percent of homes were pegged below $300,000. Last year, 64 percent of homes cost below $300,000.

“We're starting to see more confidence among builders, including the smaller ones,” said Builders Association of Northern Nevada interim president Androo Allen. “The price of a new home has gone up enough for a builder to absorb the development cost of a lot … and still come out with a profit.”

However, smaller developers do not want to rush into developing new communities unlike their larger counterparts.

"We don't want to see rapid growth, we want to see slow, consistent growth," Allen was quoted saying in the Journal report. “The market needs to define itself first so the next 12 to 18 months will determine just how solid it is.”

Real estate agents in Nevada are probably at ease now given the news that the state’s housing market is in a good state. To take advantage of the market’s positive trends, and with more new units to sell, they could use disruptive real estate marketing technologies to make more sales.

Realbiz Media Group, Inc. RBIZis a Florida-based digital media company that develops proprietary video marketing software that Nevada real estate agents and their brokers can use to promote their virtual tour listings online. The company is known for its Virtual Tour Program and consumer site Nestbuilder.com.

The Virtual Tour Program allows real estate sellers to create virtual tours and presentations that are optimized for mobile viewing and could be syndicated through social media for only $29.95 a month.

The program is equipped with a video search engine optimization (VSEO) tool that automatically generate meta tags and descriptions for virtual tours and listings agents have uploaded to the platform so that they would be found easily by consumers online. It also has tools for creating QR codes, e-flyers, and seller reports as bonus features.

Nestbuilder.com is a consumer property listing site centered on virtual tours. The website makes a great platform for marketing agents’ listings and for creating personalized agent profiles that help agents widen their reach and build their reputation. The web site utilizes Nestbuilder Agent, a disruptive marketing technology developed by Realbiz Media. Digital content published on Nestbuilder.com can be cross-published in real-time to social media as well.

To learn more about Realbiz Media and its products, contact sales@realbizmediagroup.com or call 1.888.REAL.BIZ (888.732.5249).