home: Las Vegas housing projects in outlying areas slowing down - 09/04/08 04:03 PM
A few years ago when the real estate boom was happily chugging along home prices in town were breaking records month after month. The predictable result was that many home buyers were beginning to be priced out. Smaller, established communities like Mesquite and Pahrump where land cost a lot less could offer affordable housing and they began growing steadily.
Besides them, developers were also drawing plans for new master-planned communities in the outlying areas, like Coyote Springs straight north from Las Vegas and White Hills in northern Arizona. Again, the key attraction with them was that housing out there would be … (0 comments)

home: Mortgage industry about to attract fresh capital - 08/30/08 03:26 PM
Investors are returning to the residential real estate market and that is a sign of a turnaround in the making. It may not happen tomorrow, but it's coming. There are all sorts of investors who desire to take advantage of the slumping market. In Las Vegas, for instance, they are looking around for single-family houses, condominiums and townhomes to buy and are finding bargains up and down the valley. Some might purchase just one or two of them while others go for a block of attractively-priced property.
These investors certainly are helping in reducing the glut of homes currently available for … (6 comments)

home: Las Vegas land prices soften up, except on resort corridor - 08/15/08 11:43 AM
The way the residential real estate market today is going in Southern Nevada it's no surprise that raw land values here are heading south. Demand for land is way down as the housing sector struggles with a large inventory of new and resale homes. Even if a builder wanted to purchase acreage for a project, getting financing now would be a challenge in this lending environment. The slowing economy doesn't help much either. 
In the second quarter median vacant land price stood at $570,279 per acre which turns out to be $148,232 less than at the same time last year, or a … (9 comments)

home: Las Vegas second home buying could be affected by new housing bill - 08/02/08 05:48 PM
The mammoth recent housing bill has gazillion provisions in it, covered in detail on about 600 plus pages of fine print. There is the potential mortgage refinance assistance for those in payment distress, there is the tax credit for first-time homebuyers who qualify and so on. Lots of material that when all of it is implemented and working in the months ahead it is expected to provide a helping layer of stability to the still wobbly mortgage and real estate markets.
One of the new stipulations touches on vacation properties and it can have an unknown effect on Las Vegas where … (10 comments)

home: Is an HOA for you? - 07/17/08 03:52 PM
Homeowner's associations, or HOAs, have at times been berated by angry residents who feel they've been wronged by the rules that are part of the deal in certain communities. Or perhaps not the rules themselves but how someone in the HOA management interprets them. Anyhow, it's important to know what the usual CCRs, or covenants, conditions and restrictions, mean before a purchase is made in an HOA neighborhood.
According to the Real Estate Division Nevada has about 3,000 associations that include some 450,000 condos, townhomes and single-family houses. Most of them are of course here in the Las Vegas metropolitan area.
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home: Southern Nevada home sales increase again in June - 07/10/08 04:05 PM
Las Vegas homeowners and would-be buyers are anxiously keeping an eye on the local real estate market. Homeowners want to see the price slide to finally come to halt as they've already lost a large chunk of equity during the last few years. Prospective buyers are trying to gauge when the time is ripe to make a move and purchase a home before values start climbing again.The situation appears to be slowly turning favorable for both groups. As reported by the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, or GLVAR, prices seem to be stabilizing now. In May the median single-family house … (6 comments)

home: Green building to the rescue - 07/01/08 03:43 PM
A lot of exhaustive debate is going on around the country about how to start resolving our worsening energy crisis. Well, that's good. In reality, though, this same topic has been discussed in U.S. Congress, college campuses, energy conventions, just about everywhere really, for a couple of decades now and nothing concrete has been done about it. Talk is cheap, meaningful action is what the nation needs.
Help is on the way, although on a small scale at this point. The housing industry has taken some steps in the right direction to make homes more energy-efficient. One of the bright stars … (6 comments)

home: Las Vegas real estate numbers keep improving - 06/19/08 05:00 PM
May housing numbers for Southern Nevada are mostly positive. Not too long ago all the key indicators were heading in the wrong direction, but that trend seems to be now history. Recent history for sure, but history anyway. The one truly worrisome category that keeps churning out high figures is the foreclosure filings and it may unfortunately stay that way for a while longer.
On the positive front, as reported by local research shops SalesTraq and Home Builders Research, resales grew 5.2% in May as compared to a year ago, totaling 2,606 homes sold. Bank foreclosures played a large role in … (7 comments)

home: Coyote Springs put on hold for now - 05/11/08 03:15 PM
 Development in metropolitan Las Vegas is pushing in all directions, along the cactus-dotted desert floor and up and over craggy foothills and mountains surrounding it. When about 5,000 to 6,000 people move here every month there has to be housing and services for them, but as developable and reasonably-priced land is becoming increasingly scarce, the city is understandably forced to spread further out.
 A few years ago another master-planned community was announced straight up north about 60 miles from town, way out in the high desert, named Coyote Springs. It's a 40,000 acre spread that'll hold 159,000 homes one day and … (0 comments)

home: Las Vegas real estate prices turn more affordable - 04/26/08 01:07 PM
The current crunch that descended on the Southern Nevada housing market is slowly working on what it is designed to do. It was invited to the valley by stark economic realities that had learned the bazaar had grown overheated and was actually about to spiral out of control. Home prices were zooming, builders were putting up way more houses than was needed and the mortgage money was cheap and accessible to just about anybody.
The crunch watched the frantic housing activity for a stretch and then saw it best to intervene, swooping in to save the day. And its actions are finally … (4 comments)

home: Freddie Mac to the rescue - 04/23/08 05:08 PM
Freddie Mac is one of the big players in the secondary mortgage market, buying conforming loans there to add liquidity to the vast home finance system. The current conforming loan limit is $417,000 and anything above that is called jumbo and interest rates at that altitude generally hover as much as 1.00% higher than for the conforming money. A significant disadvantage to homeowners who wish to refinance or buyers looking to bankroll a purchase. But the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 changed the loan limit and it can now go up to $729,750 in designated expensive areas. The change is good … (10 comments)

home: Mortgage foreclosures more common in outlying Las Vegas suburbs - 04/17/08 01:52 PM
Very little has changed in the last few months. Nevada still ranks as number 1 in the country in mortgage foreclosure filings with 18,087 for the first quarter of this year, according to California firm foreclosures.com. The state just can't seem to shake that undesirable position. Clark County has nearly 16,000 of that total which in turn aims the red spotlight right on Las Vegas.The noteworthy aspect here is that the large majority of the foreclosures are in the outlying suburbs. In the new home subdivisions where builders large and small kept putting up house after house during the recent exceptional … (2 comments)

home: Summerlin introduces creative real estate marketing - 03/12/08 03:11 PM
Like so many other housing markets across the country Las Vegas, too, is feeling the adverse effects of tightening mortgage guidelines, slumping home values and skittish buyers. It's a major task to sell a property under these testing circumstances.
Real estate agents, FSBOs, lenders, whoever is selling, have burned the midnight oil in a quest to discover marketing tools that work. Wide screen TVs have been offered as enticements, vacation packages, cars etc., they've all been put into action. House auctions became popular a while back, although the results with them have been mixed.
One of the latest innovations in Las Vegas is … (2 comments)

home: Hoover Dam bridge construction at full speed again - 03/05/08 04:25 PM
One day back in September of 2006 was rather unkind to the new Hoover Dam bridge project. Winds that faithful day were robust, to the tune of 55 miles per hour, and managed to knock down a vital cableway structure used to ferry building materials over the rocky Black Canyon construction site. Without it much of the work had to be temporarily suspended.
The mishap has delayed the opening of the Mike O'Callahan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge from late 2008 to the fall of 2010. It'll provide much relief to the current situation where traffic on U.S. Highway 93 has to slow down … (2 comments)

home: Las Vegas land prices in a flux - 02/22/08 06:20 PM
As the mortgage sector and the residential real estate market in the valley stumble along, the same type of instability is now evident in the raw land arena. The weakness in the former is clearly beginning to affect the latter.
In the fourth quarter of 2007 land prices here climbed to a $1.51 million per acre average over the same time period in 2006, announced local research shop Applied Analysis. That amounts to a 21.8% increase year over year. Now, if the comparison is made with the third quarter of 2007, the value in essence decreased 25%, giving it a totally different … (9 comments)

home: Housing wrestles with affordability issue - 01/30/08 01:46 PM
In multiple areas nationwide the residential real estate market remains soft and offers home buyers splendid opportunities. Prices are coming down and many sellers are at last realizing that the marketplace determines the listing price and not them. They are now more willing to negotiate rather than just turn down unappealing offers. And mortgage interest rates in recent weeks have reached new lows, hovering right around 5.5%. These developments should be boosting transaction activity, but are they making as big a difference as expected?
The word affordability plays a large role in that. The Center for Housing Policy conducted a study on the … (10 comments)

home: Las Vegas home builders going green - 01/23/08 03:33 PM
 
Southern Nevada Home Builders Association, or SNHBA, is becoming very active in embracing the green housing concept. It has combined efforts with the Green Building Initiative to draw up guidelines for the Southern Nevada Green Building Partnership, an entity that sets standards for water management, energy use and the employment of recycled and renewable construction materials in the valley. It issues certificates to builders who participate in the program, assuring home buyers that certain criteria have been met.
Thus far five local builders have signed up and they are Pinnacle Homes, Pulte Homes, R/S Development, Signature Custom Homes and Signature Homes. … (13 comments)

home: Cosmopolitan on the Strip also struggling - 01/19/08 01:41 PM
This week has really been up and down in the Las Vegas condominium market. Earlier Sinifox Financial reported how well the MGM Mirage's CityCenter condos were accepted by the luxury home buyer. A few days later the news turned sour as an item surfaced about a downtown condominium project called Newport Lofts being taken over by its lead bank. And now there is another case of premature lender involvement.
Cosmopolitan, a $3 billion condo and hotel project wedged between the Bellagio and CityCenter, was served a notice of default by Deutsche Bank when payments on a $760 million construction loan were missed. The … (8 comments)

home: Lake Las Vegas project has a new owner - 01/12/08 05:09 AM
 
Transcontinental Corp. began developing the 3,592-acre Lake Las Vegas site near Henderson in 1990 and was building upscale houses, condominiums and townhouses along the slopes of the man-made lake. Besides homes, the project also includes three luxury resorts, the MonteLago Casino and an Italian-themed village.
The soft real estate market in Southern Nevada ultimately forced last fall the ambitious developer to default on a large loan. The site has about 400 acres of raw land left and when homebuilders scheduled to develop the land missed the required option payments, the default became imminent. The demand for new housing at that juncture … (7 comments)

home: State of the real estate market today - 01/07/08 02:20 PM
The national mortgage and real estate market headlines last year were overwhelmingly pessimistic, implying that the roof is about to cave in. Many large and small lenders failed, some predictably and others unexpectedly, and several are still struggling to stay afloat. Growing foreclosure anxiety continues to keep the midnight oil burning in many government offices in Washington. Multiple areas that saw spectacular home value increases during the boom years are now gazing unbelievingly at the same curve heading mercilessly south.
Yet, several positive economic factors kept the market from turning outright ugly and it actually could be ready for a cautious … (16 comments)