As the housing market of Nevada takes early steps towards recovery, the $300 billion housing bill signed by President Bush leaves many analysts and builders hopeful of seeing acceleration in an up-swing.

Part of the bill deals with homeowners being able to refinance their existing loans into fixed rate loans backed with FHA insurance. For foreclosure homes in Nevada that comes as a relief.

In excess of 11,000 loans have been repossessed by lenders in 2008’s first 6 months, thereby affecting house prices negatively. Since the boom in the housing industry started, prices of homes are at their lowest in Nevada.

According to the Standard & Poor/Case-Shiller-index that came out last week, the highest drop in prices in Nevada was in May, with there being a decline of 28.4% in comparison with May 2007. That is higher than the approximate 20% drop that housing analyst locally reported.

The drop in prices is seen to have been ignited by the Nevada foreclosure homes where homeowners ask for the banks consent ii selling the home for what is lesser than the money remaining to be paid off on the mortgage. Out of 2,979 existing property sales for the month of June, around 60% were bank owned.

With the bill also making provisions for first time homeowners to receive up-to $7,500 as tax credits, builders in the state are also hopeful of better times ahead.

Marketing Solutions’ executive V.P, Steve Bottfield, a housing analyst in Las Vegas, has praised the housing bill, saying that it would improve the housing market. He said that he expects the market to recover by 2009 with the sales of homes exceeding the number of foreclosure homes in Nevada.

Restrepo Consulting Group’s John Restrepo, predicts that it could take around a year and a half or two years for a constant recovery to take place because the economy on the whole is weak, with growth of population and job growth both holding back for now.

He also sees a shift in pattern with there being more renters than homeowners after the recovery of the housing market.

Nevada foreclosure homes are leading the race as far as the rate is concerned. Foreclosure homes in Nevada this year came up to be 24,657. The number is not so significant but it also means that one home in every 43 households is a foreclosed homes in Nevada. Surprisingly, this wasn’t the case with Nevada last year when one home out of 200 households was a Nevada foreclosure home. Nevada foreclosures have the highest rate in the nation and needs to be tackled at the earliest.

No one would have anticipated about the current real estate crisis before 2006 when the real estate prices, be it commercial or residential had touched the sky. This increase in number of foreclosure homes in Nevada shows that there has been a drastic change in the economy of state which had a tough time due to soaring fuel prices, higher living costs and also the jobless ratio. Lot of government initiatives have started in other states and looking at the situation where Nevada foreclosures have landed, the local government should take some solid steps.