Luxury Homes in Tahoe continue falling in price

Median luxury home prices in the Lake Tahoe area were down 6% from last year, and sales volumes down almost 50%, according to the latest Coldwell banker luxury housing market report. The volume of transactions in the overall market has picked up slightly in recent months, but this seems exclusively at the lower end of the market and 50% of those sales were foreclosures or bank owned property. Mike Lombardi. manager of Coldwell banker in the Truckee-Tahoe region was typically upbeat:

“The Lake Tahoe area certainly is not immune from the challenging housing market we’re seeing in the rest of the country. But there are some encouraging signs that we may be leveling off and even starting to recover. We’ve seen strong interest in the more affordable price ranges, and that will eventually cascade to the rest of the market.”

Quite what the “encouraging signs,” are is not so clear. Coldwell banker luxury home market press release

According to Reuters, who managed to snaffle a sneak preview of Trulia’s monthly price report, in the luxury home, market segment (homes costing over $2million) 25 percent have had their asking prices reduced and the average decrease was 14% off the original asking price. Pete Flint, Trulia’s co-founder and CEO was not quite so optimistic as Coldwell banker:

“Inventory levels continue to grow in the luxury market. As inventory levels grow, I expect price reductions to continue to grow in the luxury segment.”Reuters

This is probably a more realistic assessment as the inventory is growing faster now that the banks have begun seriously foreclosing on luxury home developers.