Tom Gorman on homes, homes everywhere, but not an affordable one among the lot

March 01, 2006

Tom Gorman on homes, homes everywhere, but not an affordable one among the lot

Las Vegas SUN

I am really excited about Las Vegas' robust future after attending the annual pep rally held by the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association.

For four hours Tuesday morning I sat in a cavernous convention hall listening to a manic presentation about how Las Vegas is the center of the universe when it comes to residential construction.

That's really not news, because we've been the fastest-growing metropolitan region in the nation for 15 years running.

But oh, the diversity of our housing stock! We've got single-family homes, apartments, apartment conversions, new condos, hotel-condos, hotel-condo-time shares (with cantilevered swimming pools hanging over the edge), urban housing, suburban housing and now there's even housing in the huburbs.

(A huburb, I learned, is a microcity in which you can find everything you need within two or three miles of your home. I must live in a huburb because I'm close to work, church, Costco and In-N-Out Burger.)

Apparently the only kind of housing we don't have anymore is affordable housing. But I get the sense nobody is really bothered by that, because it was barely mentioned.

Dennis Smith, a number-crunching housing industry analyst, said some of the new master plans allow greater density because they are using narrower streets. He quickly added, "Is this an answer to affordable housing? No."

And a few minutes later, he was bragging about all the low-rise, mid-rise and high-rise condos being built around town. "Is it an answer to affordable housing?" he said again. "No."

Somebody remarked that if struggling working folks want to buy a home, they can always look around in Pahrump, Mesquite and northern Arizona. One of the downsides is that they would not qualify, I don't think, as huburbanites, but maybe these people have bigger issues on their plates.

Here are some factoids, good for cocktail party conversation:

· There were more than $27 billion in real estate transactions here last year.

· There were nearly 39,000 new homes sold in 2005 - and the projection for 2007 is 45,000 new-home sales. (I'm in the wrong business. I should have gone into solar screens.)

· Almost 20 percent of the new home sales this year are expected to be apartments-turned-condos. High-rise condos will account for 4 percent of new-home sales in 2006. (There are nine condo high rises under construction today, and they're already 90 percent sold out.)

· The median price of new homes last month, if you don't take apartment-condo conversions into account, was $343,000 - more than double what it was in 2000.

· Why is housing so expensive? Not only have construction costs skyrocketed, but the cost of buying land from the Bureau of Land Management has increased from about $31,000 an acre in May 2001 to $270,000 an acre in 2005.

· The average Las Vegas resident has seen the Mountain's Edge TV commercial 56.3 times this year, and an increasing number of viewers are starting to wish the kids would fall off their bicycles, skin their legs and bleed on their dad's freshly polished car. OK, I jest.

One of the speakers said the Las Vegas real estate market is so hot, it would be a good investment just to go out and buy a parking lot somewhere because, some day soon, the land might be needed to build a high-rise condo. And I'm not making this up.

I can't afford to buy a parking lot, but I'm thinking of subdividing my driveway.

Cha-ching.

If you are planning to relocate in the Las Vegas area, contact us for a prompt response to any questions you have about the Las Vegas real estate market. We invite you to visit our website to view updated daily listings of Las Vegas homes at Free Las Vegas Homes MLS Search