So you think the Las Vegas housing bubble has burst?
It ain’t necessarily so, as the song goes in George Gershwin’s musical, “Porgy and Bess.”
New home sales have morphed into mid-rise and high-rise units as a new trend sweeps the Las Vegas housing market—vertical construction.
Almost unnoticed in the total Vegas housing picture are nearly 38,000 high-rise and mid-rise homes in various stages of development, Steve Bottfeld, real estate consultant with Marketing Solutions, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
More than 5,000 vertical units had closed escrow as of July and 90 percent of the 111,734 units under construction are in escrow while another 11,260 are actively being sold, according to Bottfeld.
Depending on the development project, mid-rise and high-rise prices in Las Vegas run between $300,000 and $500,000.
Traditionalists, of course, cite statistics on single-family residential construction and sales, a prodigious source of print advertising. The worry warts over the bubble cite a July drop of 41 percent in new home sales compared with the same month a year ago, along with a fall of 35.1 percent of existing home sales in July as against July, 2005.
The 1,808 new-home sales closings in July were the skimpiest since April, 2003 and somewhat more than half of the 3,474 closings in June, reported local research company SalesTraq.
The lust for vertical tends to indicate a preference for amenities, and no interest in lawns to mow.
Comments
You're trying to be funny, right? There are more homes for sale than any time in the history of Las Vegas. Interest rates are up two points. You can't give your house away. All the folks with ARMs are in a spot.
Posted by: Anthony Spilatro | August 24, 2006 05:01 PM
Have you been under a rock for the past year? The Las Vegas housing market is terrible. Good luck, sellers. You'll need it.
Posted by: Kyle | August 30, 2006 04:06 AM
The housing market for Las Vegas, just might be the worst in the nation. Foreclosures in LV seem to be way higher than almost any other major metropolitan area. Here is a little informal study i did that compares LV to other cities:
Las Vegas foreclosure data, not pretty by comparison
Posted by: charts | September 17, 2006 09:06 AM