Mixed Signals
Rookie Realtors have asked me of late what to make of the seemingly confusing signals about Las Vegas real estate prospects.
Consider the following facts:
The demand for homes in Las Vegas is at 2.4 percent in monthly sales, while value appreciation is growing at 7.7%
February 2006 sales are only marginally higher than the same time last year.
Monthly sales have dropped every month between last August and now. The high median price of about $285 thousand last December has dropped to about $280 in February 2006.
The number of new Realtor licenses is leveling off.
Some developers report more cancellations than normal in the past.
Let me not continue in this vein, lest you get the wrong idea. My own business shows that customers have become more demanding, but potential remains higher than what individual players can handle. The easy days when you could close sales with minimal effort, are over. That may not be such as bad thing, because getting bookings in poorly conceived projects helps no genuine stakeholder in the long term. I think that the Las Vegas market is becoming more selective, which means that real estate agents, whether new or experienced, must raise the bar when it comes to customer delight.
I advise new entrants in the Las Vegas market to sharpen their Internal Marketing. This means doing more work on profiling new projects and existing neighborhoods, making additional efforts to segment customers and to understand their covert needs, and finally to make matches between customer needs and project or home features that can work. The same principles apply for commercial and industrial real estate, which incidentally, have significant untapped potential. I think that it is both significant and encouraging that Riviera Holdings have resumed talks with Starwood Hotels and with developer Brett Torino, to sell the classic Riviera Casino on the Strip. I would not expect experienced players to show fresh interest in mature markets if the fundamentals of Las Vegas were not strong.
Strong and continuing demand for realty in Las Vegas does not mean that we are home and dry. There are other destinations both in the United States and abroad which pose strong challenges to us in terms of attracting new investment. I think that one factor of our real estate development could be to move on from individual projects promoted by groups of private entities to a kind of master plan for the entire Las Vegas area with widespread public participation. Vacant land and superb tourism potential seem to be new strengths that we can develop sustainably to protect Las Vegas’s long term and continued leadership of the real estate market. The success of the past does not guarantee anything for the future.
Sorry to be preachy, but as I said at the outset, all this is more for novices who seek my opinion. Overall, I am confident that there are plenty of people moving in to Las Vegas every month, and that I am happily busy searching for exactly the right property to meet the special needs of each one of them!
Consider the following facts:
The demand for homes in Las Vegas is at 2.4 percent in monthly sales, while value appreciation is growing at 7.7%
February 2006 sales are only marginally higher than the same time last year.
Monthly sales have dropped every month between last August and now. The high median price of about $285 thousand last December has dropped to about $280 in February 2006.
The number of new Realtor licenses is leveling off.
Some developers report more cancellations than normal in the past.
Let me not continue in this vein, lest you get the wrong idea. My own business shows that customers have become more demanding, but potential remains higher than what individual players can handle. The easy days when you could close sales with minimal effort, are over. That may not be such as bad thing, because getting bookings in poorly conceived projects helps no genuine stakeholder in the long term. I think that the Las Vegas market is becoming more selective, which means that real estate agents, whether new or experienced, must raise the bar when it comes to customer delight.
I advise new entrants in the Las Vegas market to sharpen their Internal Marketing. This means doing more work on profiling new projects and existing neighborhoods, making additional efforts to segment customers and to understand their covert needs, and finally to make matches between customer needs and project or home features that can work. The same principles apply for commercial and industrial real estate, which incidentally, have significant untapped potential. I think that it is both significant and encouraging that Riviera Holdings have resumed talks with Starwood Hotels and with developer Brett Torino, to sell the classic Riviera Casino on the Strip. I would not expect experienced players to show fresh interest in mature markets if the fundamentals of Las Vegas were not strong.
Strong and continuing demand for realty in Las Vegas does not mean that we are home and dry. There are other destinations both in the United States and abroad which pose strong challenges to us in terms of attracting new investment. I think that one factor of our real estate development could be to move on from individual projects promoted by groups of private entities to a kind of master plan for the entire Las Vegas area with widespread public participation. Vacant land and superb tourism potential seem to be new strengths that we can develop sustainably to protect Las Vegas’s long term and continued leadership of the real estate market. The success of the past does not guarantee anything for the future.
Sorry to be preachy, but as I said at the outset, all this is more for novices who seek my opinion. Overall, I am confident that there are plenty of people moving in to Las Vegas every month, and that I am happily busy searching for exactly the right property to meet the special needs of each one of them!
posted by realestatevegas | 12:55 AM
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