It doesn’t take long for the new to become old in Las Vegas:
LAS VEGAS — They blow up aging casinos in this town. Now, some are wondering what to do about yesterday’s desert dream homes.
The housing slump has fattened the inventory of unsold homes throughout the country. But there’s another twist to the story here — a glut of glitzy homes.
About 1,000 houses are listed for sale in Las Vegas for $1 million or higher, more than 600 of them built since 2004. But unless they’ve been built in the past year or two, the properties are considered out-of-date — making them all that more difficult to sell, real estate agents say.
Just as casinos on the Strip compete fiercely to be the prime destination— and seldom hold that distinction for more than a couple of years — houses and entire neighborhoods in Las Vegas are quickly eclipsed by flashier newcomers.
More difficult financing has also hurt upper end housing, compounding the difficulties of selling more expensive property- Not that the problems are exclusively in the luxury properties:
The housing slump has left Las Vegas strewn with empty houses at all price points.
There are now more than 22,000 homes for sale here, 51 percent of them vacant, according to the Las Vegas real estate research company SalesTraq.
Same problem happening in alot of places…I know friends of ours who live in Atlanta who say there are lots of million dollar homes sitting empty since built in 06…now in the middle of 08 already..people view those homes diffently as they are getting closer to the 3 year mark of not being a new home but instead a vacant one..
Here in SFL..there are tons of “million dollar homes” that are now selling for $600-800K…
You have to question why they were selling for a million dollars.. Obviously those house were built as prestige residences, which is flaky at best.
Too much money can really distort peoples priorities.
I don’t live in Las Vegas, but it’s the same story here. The luxury homes are priced at 70 cents on the dollar and nobody wanted to buy. We are finally getting some sales, but the amount of homes coming on the market are out pacing sales. ESPECIALLY for the luxury homes. Once people figure out that we are not even close to the bottom of the credit crisis, new buyers will continue to hold out even longer.
The problem I think Montyloree was appealing to those transplants that were coming from the inflated market like CA and FL and higher cost cities like NY…the problem is once they stopped moving to ATL..the market for those kinds of homes dried up..along with easy loan products that were available to put them there…in ATL very affordable housing still exist and it isn’t necessary to go to luxury prices to get luxury..visited a friends house there and they have an amazing home that was very reasonable compared to FL home prices..The same house in Fl even in this declining market would have cost double… with 1/3 of the land..
From my tree branch what I’m seeing in LV is 300K-800K as the real nightmare. 800 Sq. ft. built up into the air to achieve 1600 to sell for 400K with neighbors an arms length away, front door 2 arm lengths from the street and a driveway that can’t handle a hummer. As you go up in price you get more space but the pricing is just as silly. Regretfully this drove the quality homes proportionally higher and made all of us think we were lucky to get in on the way up. If you took out a 2nd, re-financed or whatever you’ve achieved an upside down. If you rely on these people for your business, you’re in deep doo-doo. Las Vegas will always have the strip, but it looks like suburbia should revert back to rainbow blvd.
I’ve been renting since 8-06 in Vegas, and won’t ever consider buying here. Not only will it be until 2012 until prices stabilize, the water is supposed to run out in 2017. Dudes, that’s ONLY 10 years away. I don’t know of any mortgage company that will absolve me of my mortgage if the tap runs dry – so why buy and get stuck with a mortgage on a house in a ghost town? The strip will always have water, but the rest of suburban Las Vegas is going to be a dust bowl. Count on it.
We are taking 100 million acre feet a year more out of the lake than is coming in. It’s simple math an eigth-grader can do.
leggo
Leggo –
Could not agree more. Same with Phoenix and even to a certain extent LA, although technically we do have the Pacific to de-salinate, but how scaleable is that?
Las Vegas, at some point in the very near future, is going to have to face the fact that the water is not infinite and the fringe will fell it first and worst.
DTS
Leggo
Las Vegas is using 100 Million acre feet over adding? Cite please.
According to Nevada’s Water Dept, the entire Clark County Domestic Usage is about 420k acre feet, with the entire county usage being just over 1 million acre feet.
Also, agriculture accounts for 80-90% of Lower Colorado river water usage. Before Vegas runs dry, farms will parch.
The lake will hurt, but Vegas isn’t running out of water anytime soon. If we don’t take it from White Pine, we will pay California to desalinate and take their water.