Apparently, a strong housing market doesn’t really depend on people having good jobs in order to come up with a down payment and service a mortgage. Whether that strong housing market is healthy or not is another matter as detailed in this special report at Reuters.

The once-beleaguered Las Vegas housing market has been on fire since investment firms led by Blackstone Group LP, Colony Capital and American Homes 4 Rent began buying homes here some eight months ago, backed by $8 billion in investor cash to spend nationally.

These big investors and a handful of others have bought at least 55,000 single-family homes across the U.S. in the past year. In the Vegas area alone, they have accounted for at least 10 percent of the homes sold since January 2012, according to a Reuters analysis of housing transactions.

That added firepower helps explain why home prices in this metropolitan area of 2 million people are up 30 percent over a year ago, far more than the national average of 10 percent.

There’s lots more in this story, most of it disturbing such as 60 percent of Las Vegas home sales being all cash and a reminder that hot money from Wall Street doesn’t tend to stick around once the artificial appreciation stops – when that will be is anyone’s guess.

I missed the S&P Case-Shiller housing report earlier in the week where is looks like Las Vegas is about to overtake Phoenix as the nation’s hottest housing market.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes fell 0.6 percent last month, from a downwardly revised, seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.95 million units in February to 4.92 million units in March.

Home prices continued to rise due to low inventory, record low mortgage rates, record government guarantees of new mortgages, record purchases of mortgage debt by the Federal Reserve, strong demand from Wall Street investors, and what are clearly signs of speculative fervor in parts of the country.

The number of unsold homes increased 1.6 percent in March to 1.93 million, representing a 4.7 months supply, up from 4.6 months in February and part of a normal seasonal rise as the inventory figures are not adjusted for seasonal variations. But, only 30,000 units were added to inventory last month, far lower than the average March increase of 100,000 units.

The median home price rose from $173,600 to $184,300, a gain of 11.8 percent from a year ago and the biggest annual increase since a 12.8 percent gain during the housing bubble heyday in late-2005. Distressed homes accounted for 21 percent of all sales in March, up from 25 percent in February, and all-cash sales were unchanged at 30 percent while investors were responsible for 19 percent of sales, down from 22 percent the month prior.