By any measure 2015’s housing market for the Reno-Sparks was much improved over 2014, adding a fourth consecutive year of rising prices — equating to increased owner equity and fewer homeowners underwater.
Let’s take a look a some of 2015’s key metrics and see how they compared with the previous year(s).
Median sale price
2015 wrapped up with a median sales price of $289,500 for the month of December. That median home price was more than $27,000 (or 15.5 percent) over December 2014’s median sales price of $261,995. As I mentioned above, 2015 was the fourth consecutive year of increasing sales prices. The table below shows the December median sales prices, and year-over-year percent increases going back to 2011.
| Year | December median sales price | Year-over-year % increase |
| 2011 | $155,000 | – |
| 2012 | $186,500 | 20.3% |
| 2013 | $231,000 | 23.9% |
| 2014 | $261,995 | 13.4% |
| 2015 | $289,500 | 10.5% |
As a reference point, after the collapse of the house bubble in 2006, home prices fell for six years before bottoming in January 2012 — when the median sales price that month hit a low of $135,000. Today, the Reno-Sparks current median sales price is up 116 percent over that bottom.
Units sold
The number of houses sold in 2015 was also up over the previous year. The 6,316 houses sold in 2015 represented a 5.8 percent increase over the 5,970 houses sold during 2014. Additionally, the number of houses sold in 2015 set a new record for the highest number of houses sold in any year for the Reno-Sparks market.
Volume sold
With increasing sales prices and more houses being sold its no surprise that total volume sold for the year was up over the previous year. 2015’s total volume sold was $2,084,899,543. Compare that to the $1,733,469,150 total sales volume in 2014. 2015’s total sales value was up $351,430,393, or 20.3 percent over 2014.
Though a very large number, 2015’s total sales volume did not break the record set in 2005 (the height of the housing bubble) of $2,478,390,159. That being said, 2016 could a record-setting year for sales volume.
That’s a quick snapshot of 2015. If you would like to see other metrics for 2015 not covered above, let me know in the comments below.
As always, thank you for reading the Reno Realty Blog.
Note: The data reported above covers the cities of Reno, Nevada and Sparks, Nevada [NNRMLS Area #100]. Residential data includes Site/Stick Built properties only. Data excludes Condo/Townhouse, Manufactured/Modular and Shared Ownership properties. Data courtesy of the Northern Nevada Regional MLS – January 2016. Note: This information is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed.
Zen
Guy, you posted an article under This Weeks Real Estate Headlines called “Top Cities for First-Time Buyers in 2016.” Reno was listed as one of the cities. In the article, it states that the median home sales price for Reno is $200,400. You list the median home price for the area in December in this article as $292,000. Maybe the article was only talking about Reno and not the whole area MLS and maybe their info was a bit out dated, but those numbers still seem way off. I know you didn’t write that article, but do you have any insight as to where they could have come up with that number.
Guy Johnson
Thank you for your question Zen. Yes, that number reported in the “Top Cities for First-Time Buyers in 2016” infographic is very far off from Reno’s current median sales price. I am guessing that the data reported is either very outdated, or it is was pulled using different criteria than what I use when I report on the numbers each month (which, by the way, will be posted soon).
And speaking of which, since the time that I published the blog post above (January 3rd), a few more December sales have been entered into the MLS — thusly impacting December’s median sales price. As of this writing December’s median sales price is $290,000 — or a 10.7 percent increase over December 2014.