Josh Snider and Cindy Rojas visited the lot for their home at Coronado Ranch in Las Vegas, developed by America West states. The New York Times presents an article which suggests the beginning of another Las Vegas property bubble.
“Its like it’s never been,” Mr. Lee, a real estate promoter, assured a crowd of agents, investors and bankers. “We’re going to come back like you’ve never seen us before.”
Home prices in Las Vegas are down by 60 percent from 2006 in one of the steepest descents in modern times. There are 9,517 spanking new houses sitting empty. An additional 5,600 homes were repossessed by lenders in the first three months of this year and could soon be for sale.
Yet builders here are putting up 1,100 homes, and they are frantically buying lots for even more.
Las Vegas is trying to recover by building what it does not need. It is an unlikely pattern being repeated in many of the areas where the housing crash was most severe.
“There’s a surprising rebound in the hardest-hit markets,” said Brad Hunter, chief economist with the consultant Metrostudy. “People are buying again.” From the recession’s lows, construction has nearly doubled in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson. It is up 74 percent in inland Southern California and soaring in Florida.
If there’s one point I want to get across, it’s that it’s time to get ready for recovery,” said Lee, vice president of the Nevada division and director of public relations for First American Title Insurance Co. “But it’s do-over time — time for a second chance. The old Vegas formula just doesn’t work anymore,” states a similar article in the Las Vegas Sun.
