Las Vegas: same house, five years apart, two different lives
No metro punished 2006 and rewarded 2011 quite like Las Vegas.
The 2006 buyer and the 2011 buyer bought the same stucco house with the same pool cage. By the FHFA index, the 2006 buyer’s purchase stands at 1.5× today. The 2011 buyer — who bought into a metro everyone had written off, from a seller who’d had enough — is at 3.6×.
Every argument about “houses always go up” and every argument about “housing is a bubble” is really an argument about which of these two people you would have been. Most of us, honestly, would have been the 2006 one — confidence peaks with prices.
Figures are index-derived estimates for the metro market — not an appraisal of any specific house. FHFA data; this site is neither endorsed nor certified by FHFA. Not financial advice.