Las Vegas Real Estate Blog

Las Vegas, Nevada is a growing spot, not just for vacationers, but as well for individuals and families that are moving there as well. A common misunderstanding is that Las Vegas features only fancy hotels with grand casinos or resort areas for family travelers; though, a lot of people move to Las Vegas to enjoy other benefits. Las Vegas offers enlightening opportunities, tax breaks, employment opportunities, and much more. Hence, finding Las Vegas Nevada real estate is getting easier as the city continues to grow.

Moving to Las Vegas from another state can seem overwhelming. Not only do you need to find Las Vegas real estate, but you also have to become comfortable with Nevada state regulations for moving to that area. You can do all the research yourself or employ a reliable real estate agent to assist you in your search. Whether searching for Las Vegas condos for sale or Las Vegas homes for sale, choosing the right Las Vegas real estate agent will save you from scores of headaches.

How to Pick a Las Vegas Real Estate Agent

Be sure the agent you want is willing to go the extra mile for you. If you living far from Las Vegas, you’ll want an agent who can do the research for you in finding a new house. The last thing you need is to travel back and forward only to visit new homes that do not meet your criteria. The real estate agent might also be willing to assist you find Henderson real estate if you want to live on the outskirts of Las Vegas.

Choose a Las Vegas real estate agent who will carefully research each new home to be sure it fits perfectly with what you wish for. Be sure they offer online services also so you be able to view the potential homes online before taking a trip. This will save you much time and money.

Building a New Home in Las Vegas

Maybe you’d somewhat build a new home in Las Vegas. If so, choose a real estate agent who can help you find reasonable Las Vegas land in a good spot. The agent might also be able to help you find a reliable builder in the area.

Other Valuable Services

Other services your agent might provide that can benefit you when buying Las Vegas real estate contain providing connections with an affordable mortgage lender, skill in foreclosures, repossessions and estate homes, and experience in corporate rearrangement.

Where to Look

To get a reliable Las Vegas real estate agent, begin by searching online. The Web is a huge source where you can learn all about an agent before you ever meet them! This as well will save time and money.

Whether you’re planning on moving into a new home, a Las Vegas condo, or building a Las Vegas home, you’ll find that hiring a dependable Las Vegas real estate agent to be a excellent time-saver!

Read competent points of view about vacation home – your individual tips store.

Hike, bike, or ride, that’s easy to do here in the Las Vegas Valley, and Henderson has plenty to offer and more planned for the future. Henderson won the 2008 Las Vegas Review Journal’s ‘Best Place to Ride a Bike’ in it’s ‘Best of Las Vegas’ awards this year. This Saturday, October 18, from 9 AM – 2 PM at the Events Plaza on Water St., they’re having their National Trails Day Celebration with speakers, information, and vendors of trail supplies on hand.

The trail system is part of Henderson’s Parks and Recreation, and there are several trails to chose from. The largest of them underway is River Mountains Loop Trail. When the last few sections are completed in 2009, it will be 35 miles long and wrap around River Mountain from Henderson to Boulder City, through the Lake Mead Recreation Area and back into Henderson by Lake Las Vegas.

The trail is paved for hikers, joggers, bikers, and equestrian traffic has a parallel gravel trail. They are also some interesting spurs that come off of it, including the old Hoover Dam Railroad Line Trail with it’s 5 – roughly 300′ long, 25′ diameter tunnels. This is the section of rail spur that was abandoned after the dam was built, the remainder used for historic train rides from the Nevada Railroad Museum’s Nevada Southern Railway. These last sections of the loop that are set to be completed in Spring 2009 will run alongside the NSR tracks from Railroad Pass, cross over them below Cascada Golf Course where a 100′+ long span pedestrian bridge will go above Cascada Drive and continue on to Bootleg Canyon Trails and Boulder City.

Of course our crazy Jack Russell, Sparky, is always ready for some exercise. She was all fired up to take in a few miles of trail today, so off we went. This was on the Pittman Wash Trail that extends from Arroyo Grande Sports Complex, that I mentioned in my blog on Whitney Ranch, and runs to East Pebble near Eastern and the 215. This trail is also paved and lighted, with benches, picnic tables, ‘doggie bags’, and trash cans along the way. Many different neighborhoods back to either side of the wash, from single family and condo units to large custom homes. It also passes under the UPRR spur line that services the Black Mountain Industrial Park, that will also have a future trail running beside it.

Here’s a few pictures from along the trail today, and you can see a few of the homes and neighborhoods along that stretch. We’re getting into our ’second spring’ with some of the ground cover desert plants changing from browns to greens, and others like some of the cactus near ready to bloom their large flowers that look almost like roses. To view full screen, simply click the HD / Full Screen button on the bottom of the
player, and when finished click it again or use the ESC key to return.

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see the XML Flash player embedded in the current posting? To view this and all
my other Las Vegas slideshows, including some of the interesting neighborhoods
and events found in and around the Las Vegas Valley,  CLICK HERE.

If you
are interested in relocating to Las Vegas
or would like information on Las Vegas real estate, please email me, Roberta LaRocca, at roberta@search4lasvegashomes.com,
or call me at 702-354-8988. I look forward to hearing from
you!

Las Vegas real estate experts discuss real estate timing with Jim Vander Mey, an accountant from Washington State. Jim explains why he feels it is a good time to buy a home in Southern Nevada.

Thanks to local Las Vegas real estate professionals Steve Hawks and Kedall Trotter for once again providing in depth coverage of the Las Vegas real estate market.  Always right on the money.  Hats off to Mr. Jim Vander Mey for contributing his invaluable insight and clearing up some murky waters for us.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI9Yqb0jtgM

Here’s what I think happened:

I will try to be brief. This is a snap shot, not a docu-drama, but I had to tell somebody.

The media has a different point of view, of course, but in my experience here in Las Vegas, those greedy investors who are now getting what they deserve and those poor home owners at risk of losing their homes are, to a large degree, the very same people!

There may be notable exceptions – some large corporations and LLCs, and some individuals that nobody likes anyway.

Las Vegas is a place where lots of people go because you can to try to make it, start over, or pull yourself up by your bootstraps. The “No-Doc loans” and adjustable rate mortgages of a couple years ago were just the way the game was played in a town where lots of people make over a hundred thousand a year in tips … and sometimes don’t report it. Anyone wanting to get their piece of the American Dream would have had to be crazy not to buy a house in Las Vegas if there was any way that they could.

The current market correction in real estate is not caused by lack of demand, an over supply of homes for sale, or a change in the basic demographics driving the earlier Las Vegas bull market.

From where I stand, many of the people who had adjustable rate mortgages planned to refinance them long before they adjusted. They were making their payments, and if they also owned investment properties, as many people in Las Vegas do, they had them rented out and were handling whatever negative cash flow that included. They were caught off guard like the rest of the world.

Who knew Wall Street had bundled sub-prime loans into EVERYTHING, just like a computer virus? So, we had a crisis of confidence in the international lending community and suddenly, people who wanted to refinance could not. The media banged their drum and sold their newspapers for all they were worth. Once the foreclosures started, home values retreated because all the 20% second mortgages were “foreclosed” and gone. Private owners are holding their listings off the market waiting for a brighter day . Everything else reflects the demise of the second mortgages. Only the most attractive foreclosure prices make up the bulk of closed sales, so it appears that values (Median Price, Average Price) have fallen 20% or more. Appraisers must take into account the distressed REO’s, and so the tail wags the dog.

For now.

The same factors that made homes worth the prices paid in 2005 and 2006 and the first half of 2007 are still present. It’s a lot like the speculation that has just given us $4.00 gasoline, only in reverse. With gasoline, demand didn’t suddenly go way up and supply didn’t go way down, did it?

This Too Shall Pass:
I guess my point is, this too shall pass. The people who gave us a strong real estate market in Las Vegas are still there. They are, by and large “little guys,” – average hard working Las Vegas people, whether new residents or old, trying to make things better for themselves and their families. They still move here at an incredible rate. They can’t take advantage of the market now, but, when “the powers that be” finally pull their heads out of their Special Place and allow the average person to again get a home mortgage, Las Vegas will be waiting with thousands of jobs, billions in new infrastructure, in the heart of the new solar energy belt, and … with affordable home prices.

The banks have learned to feed the foreclosures into the market. Right now, there is a bona fide feeding frenzy for any house less than $100/sq ft … and some houses at $110/sq ft have multiple offers … even without our traditional “no doc” buyers!

You can list a single family house at $85/sq ft, but it is nearly impossible to sell it that cheap. The market will bid it higher. Even now it makes more sense for our House Team buyers to negotiate with a private owner who is just slightly over priced but ready to make a deal, than to try to out-bid two or three dozen other offers and wait for the bank to call back if they feel like it.

Steady Growth?
As the market sells out the foreclosures over the next year or two, assuming we reduce the number of homes going in, hypothetically, the supply of REO’s will decline and prices will rise.

As home prices rise, at some point we will hit a $/sq ft threshold where private owners – like the ones who bought before or after the peak – will begin to come back into the market. They should fill the gap left by falling numbers of foreclosures possibly producing more of a swell rather than a wave. We should note, our monthly listing numbers for Las Vegas have remained the same for several years.

New Home Developers, who generally haven’t been building anything in the past year or so, may wait to pull larger numbers of new home permits because they won’t be able to demonstrate demand to their lenders, who are likely to be twice shy. So, there you have the recipe for slow, steady growth, just like we wanted, right?

I don’t think so.

Where are all the people walking away from foreclosures in the snow and rust belt going to go when Las Vegas has sixty thousand new jobs? Maine?

Las Vegas pending single family sales were at 2234 on May first (we officially closed 1794 units for April – the preceding 30 days), 2542 on June first (we officially closed 2026 for May) and we have 2591 pending sales today (we unofficially closed 2116 units in June).

If that holds up, not only has each month in 2008 seen more closings than the month before, and we are still better than 2007 for the third month in a row and pulling away, but also it would be the first time since 2005 that June saw more closings than May.

Also, with pendings strong, IF we close 2100 Single Family deals in July we will be ahead of 2006. That would put us in striking distance of the slow months (October thru January) during the “Boom” of 2004 and 2005 when single family closing numbers ranged between 1985 (in Jan of 05) and 2604 (Oct of 2004).

That may not happen if 2008 tails off in the fall as most years do. Or, it could happen, since we have many more people in Las Vegas who haven’t bought anything in 3 years, we should be doing numbers comparable to those given the growth, and the banks are feeding excess foreclosures slowly into the market, so I hear, and FHA transactions are up 2000% since January 2008 (so I heard last Friday from Jeremy Dougherty, area VP with Countrywide).

What I think the official GLVAR numbers show is that Las Vegas closing numbers below 1000 per month (October 2007 thru Jan 2008) represent the bottom as far as demand is concerned.

We are building sales with one arm tied behind our backs, namely, the average guy is still not fully back in the game – FHA makes you declare your tips, and some people don’t want to yet.

When the new president announces that he is here to save the economy and Congress decides they need to save their jobs, Las Vegas will run short of houses in 2010.

Buy Low, Sell High.

Thank you once again Makea Turner for your daily podcast updates about Las Vegas Luxury High Rise Condo’s.  Please contact Makea with any questions or inquiries into your Las Vegas Luxury High Rise needs. Check her out as an author above!

Learn about what the foreclosure crisis has done to the Las Vegas High Rise Condo market and what is expected to happen in the next few months. Get the inside scoop about all the bank owned High Rise Condos in Las Vegas. Have access to the only developer 3 bedroom High Rise Condo at Sky Las Vegas on the Strip.

Licensed Las Vegas real estate agent and Luxury High Rise Condo specialist, Makea Turner keeps us updated with the latest happenings in the High Rise Condo market. Her podcast updates are professional, current, and dare we say….. ‘AMAZING’!

In this episode, Makea gives us an inside look into:
The latest closings in the last 30 days (One was on the market less that 24 hrs.!)
How many sales are pending
Which properties are HOT!
A Bank Owned Condo Steal

Enjoy the podcast & contact Makea with your Las Vegas Condo questions.

(Congress discussing safety standards of Las Vegas High Rise Construction. Great video.)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvfuqKQax78

Thank you to Las Vegas High Rise Condo Specialist and licensed Nevada real estate agent Makea Turner for finding and displaying this video on YouTube.

Get All The Latest Las Vegas High Rise Condo News, Information and Deals. Visit:
http://www.MakeaTurnercbw.com
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http://HighRise99lv.blogspot.com
Or Call 1-800-856-0687 -24/7 To Receive Market Reports, Deal High Light Reports and Las Vegas High Rise Condominium Development Information.