Monthly Archives: October 2009

By now you probably know that I’m a little obsessive when it comes to Real Estate.

Darn, I wish my crystal ball wouldn’t have broken- would have made my job so much easier….  Beside spending my days assisting Buyers and Sellers, I take tons of classes and frequent many seminars to help you better understand what’s happening NOW and to fill my brain with as much information I possibly can.

But there is something all the training I can handle cannot give me.  It cannot define exactly what’s to come (thus the need for the trusty crystal ball…).

There is one thing that’s a definite though.  We live in a city that has one heck of a crazy real estate market! Is the market booming? YES.  Is the market seeing signs of distress? YES.

How can one market be both good and, well- not so good- at the same time?

Did you know that over the past several months we have surpassed sales numbers on residential real estate by quite a bit… Las Vegas is selling more homes today than it did during the “boom”. I recently spoke to an agent who had a bank-owned foreclosure listed and received 65 offers on the property WITHIN THE FIRST DAY!  Most of the offers being OVER ASKING PRICE.  And the stories of multiple offers substantially higher than list price are really common- especially for homes under $100,000.

Investors are back. The real ones.  Cash talks, and these guys and gals have access to it.  They know a good thing when they see it.  Even if they’re offering well above asking price, they understand that the values are currently so low- even at a higher (many times tens of thousands of dollars higher) sales price- that they are still “stealing” these properties.

There’s all types of investors too.  Some are purchasing with a five year (or how ever many years work for their specific investment) plan and are renting out their newly acquired properties.

Some are picking up homes, making some repairs/ renovations and turning around and selling them at profits (the REAL flippers).

One thing for sure is that these Investors are like blood hounds.  They’re constantly sniffing out deals, and if they aren’t good ones, they don’t bite… These are the folks that plan on coming out of the “R” word smelling like roses….

So why is everything we hear about the Las Vegas Real Estate market telling us that we’re one of the worst in the country?

It’s the double-edged sword I see every day.  We’ve discussed in the past how we were the fastest increasing market during the “boom”.  We’ve also talked about how our city’s taken one of the largest hits in value decline- I hear numbers anywhere between 45-50% decreases.  That hurts.

Approximately 85% of Las Vegas homeowners are “under water” in their homes.  The decreases, coupled with the fact that many of us used our homes as atm’s when prices were rising like helium balloons and money was dirt cheap & easy to access, put us in a very precarious situation.

We, as individual sellers, are finding it nearly impossible to sell our homes for a profit.  If we can no longer afford, or for other reasons must leave our homes, we will more than likely have to sell for a loss- in most situations attempt to have a SHORT SALE approved by our lenders.

So back to the topic at hand- is the news good or bad? Is it a Buyers or Sellers Market.  Anything worthy under 100K- it’s a certainly a  SELLER’S market- but the majority of sellers benefiting from this craze are the banks and lenders. Anything over 200K- in most instances it is truly a BUYER’S market.

Two completely different (however, equally accurate) spins in the same exact city. 

Only in Vegas Baby….