Slack of appreciation.

Byline: Hubble Smith

Mar. 4--Home appreciation in Las Vegas has slowed dramatically from the torrid pace of two years ago and turned negative in some areas of the valley last year, a local housing market analyst said.

Median existing home prices increased 3.6 percent valleywide to $285,000 in 2006, based on more than 90,000 existing home closings recorded by the Clark County assessor's office in 2005 and 2006, Larry Murphy of Las Vegas-based SalesTraq reported.

Murphy's breakdown of 52 ZIP codes in the Las Vegas Valley showed 35 areas with positive appreciation, seven unchanged and 10 on the negative side.

The largest declines were 4 percent in ZIP codes 89044 and 89085, while gains reached 18 percent in 89030 and 89103.

"These results fly in the face of the doomsday sayers who only a year ago were predicting that property values in Las Vegas would drop precipitously when the real estate bubble burst in Las Vegas," Murphy said. "It also flies in the face of local analysts who have been declaring all year long that property values are dropping. The fact is that following the boom of 2004 when we saw appreciation rates of 40 percent, the only thing that has dropped has been the appreciation rate itself."

Murphy has had to make adjustments over five years of reporting appreciation by ZIP code, "tweaking" his calculations to account for factors that…