This was on Forbes.com……………..
Real Estate

Where U.S. Home Sales Are Rising

Matt Woolsey, 01.12.09, 04:00 PM EST

Motivated sellers in these 10 cities are fueling deals and hastening recoveries.

 In Depth: America's Best Cities For Home Buyers

Something funny's happening in Las Vegas. Home sale prices from last year are down 28%, but home sales are up 15%.

The reason? Motivated sellers--those in distress or foreclosure--or banks with too many homes on the books are slashing asking prices in order to unload their properties. Motivated sellers in Las Vegas accounted for 64% of sales in October, the highest rate in the country according to Radar Logic, a New York-based derivatives firm that provided the data for this story.

That means buyers are getting deals and hastening Las Vegas' recovery. In fact, buyers are eating up inventory fast enough that the discounts offered by motivated sellers are tightening as supply contracts. The difference between what motivated sellers have to offer and what non-motivated sellers can command has held steady for three months at a 17% discount, versus the 33% national average. So while it's still a buyers' market, prices have dropped to a level that's stimulated demand.

"There's a pretty active housing market, it's simply at a lower-priced inventory," says Michael Feder, chief executive of Radar Logic. "And there are now bidding wars taking place over homes in foreclosure."