The bust that began in mid-2006 cut 62 percent in the value of Las Vegas homes and 56 percent in Phoenix.

“The bigger they gained, the harder they fell,” said David Blitzer, managing director at Standard & Poor’s Financial Services.

Backyard Waterfall

The Las Vegas property that doubled its value in three months is a 3,600-square-foot house with five bedrooms and a three-car garage, plus a pool and waterfall in the backyard. It sits on a half-acre lot about 12 miles north of the casinos on Las Vegas Boulevard, known as the Strip.

In Arizona, the 2,800-square-foot house that gained 84 percent in three months has four bedrooms, a pool, and an acre of land north of the city. In both examples, the recent sales information is from RealtyTrac and prior prices are from deeds and assessment records. Both properties were bought and resold by investors.

President Barack Obama, who took office in the midst of the financial crisis brought on by the collapse of the housing market, has warned at least four times this month about what he called “artificial bubbles.”

Obama’s Concern

“We have to turn the page on the bubble-and-bust mentality that created this mess,” he said in his Aug. 10 weekly radio address.

The real estate markets in Las Vegas and Phoenix are being driven by a shortage of homes, for entirely different reasons. In Phoenix, the dearth of properties is caused by the breakneck pace of foreclosure completions. The inventory of homes in foreclosure in Phoenix dropped 64 percent from a year earlier, the fastest pace in the nation, according to CoreLogic.

In Las Vegas, new consumer protection laws have slowed the pace of repossessions.