Las Vegas Homes, Condos, Land and Commercial Real Estate Blog

Comparing new homes for sale by Las Vegas home builders with short sales, foreclosures and regular re-sales

Median prices for Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas new homes for sale is about $190,000 while the median price for Las Vegas resale homes, including bank owned (foreclosure) homes, short sales and regular sales is about $126,000.

Two brand new model homes are for sale at Kingwood subdivision in Summerlin which is a Las Vegas master planned community. Las Vegas new home builders build model homes on the best parcels and highly upgrade them to entice buyers. Upgrades for model homes that are shown to perspective buyers can run as much as $50K-$100K. However most new home buyers do not add so much upgrades to the homes that they order and the end product looks different from the model home, thus we ask the sales staff at new home builder’s sales offices to show inventory or nearly finished homes to our clients.

Las Vegas new home builder’s model homes are highly upgraded; see the hardwood flooring in the entrance

Although model homes are poor choices to do a comparison between new and resale homes the builder is not charging full price for the upgrades on these homes. Please see base price and asking prices for the two Summerlin new model homes.

Summerlin Model new homes for sale by R/S Development

There are two highly upgraded model homes for sale in Summerlin, brand new one story homes for sale are hard to find in Summerlin and R/S Development is selling out. The asking price for these 1647 and 1769 square foot new homes are priced at $159/SF and $163/SF respectively. Clark County Assessor has erroneously included the garage space in the square footage of one of the homes and shows it as 2085 square foot, mistakes happen.

New home builders in Las Vegas now include upgrades such as granite countertops in the kitchen island, Energy Star Appliances and other upgrades. These compete better with re-sales such as bank owned Las Vegas homes or even auction homes since many of them have not been highly upgraded.

Dining Room of a Las Vegas new model home, furniture and appliances can be purchased for $10,000

As I have previously written, ordering a new Las Vegas home from scratch is the least cost effective way to buy a home in Las Vegas, however it allows the buyer to live in a brand new home that is built to their taste and enjoy the warranties which are provided by the Las Vegas builder such as one year bumper to bumper warranty and 10 year structural warranty.

If a buyer is dead set on buying a new home, then they should see if they can buy an inventory home since they still get to choose some upgrades such as flooring, etc and save thousands of dollars in the form of instant equity if compared to other new homes in the same subdivision, as new homes that need financing have to appraise. By the way, look at the base price for the new homes which I discussed and the current selling price. The builder is not charging full price for the upgrades because these brand new model homes are inventory homes after all.