Crash? What counties do you consider a "bellwether" for market?

[Jay G.]

I'm a market data guy.  Let's do a little (possibly insightful) exercise here....  what counties do you consider a bellweather for market conditions? That is, the county that is most likely to be the "canary in the coal mine" so to speak, to determine when the market may indeed be rolling over, rather than just cyclically cooling off.   If we can get a consensus on a few counties I'll crunch data and report the results.

[Bill B.]

Yeah. Vegas is down to 2800 houses for sale and 980 condos. With 3536 units sold last month, we have about 1 month’s supply. What’s a balanced market again? 6 months? So if sales fall another 80%, and inventory doesn’t, we’ll have a balanced market? 

Peak selling season and you have maybe 600 houses and a couple hundred condos to choose from without an offer?  Narrow that down by location, square feet, garage spaces, bedrooms, yard space, ignore price, layout, condition, and design, and you probably still have 2-3 houses to choose from unless someone else gets there first. In the entire valley. Better hurry before selling season is over and inventory dries up.  Don’t forget. Most of those sellers are going to buy another home in the valley. So if 300 of those homes get sold the sellers might buy he other 300  

https://www.thelasvegasluxuryh...

Don’t get me wrong. Prices have already fallen more than 5% once in its 115 year history (or more fairly, in the 70 years it’s been “vegas”) it could certainly happen again in the next 100 years. That would drop prices back to January’s prices. Or a 10% drop back to November 2021 prices. We’d certainly hate to see a 20% drop, an insane number. Back to may 2021. Of course anyone with any money in he stock market knows that. 

Maybe we get lucky and it drop 5-10% in October back to May 2022 prices, or we get unlucky and they still haven’t fixed inflation and prices are up another 20%, and inventory has cratered as nobody wants to sell and give up their mortgage.