Homes now hot commodity

Jennifer Shubinski

Sunday, Nov. 13, 2005 | 7:42 a.m.

Twelve years ago most of Realtor Jennifer Pitterle's clients would tell her they didn't want to live in North Las Vegas.

The area's image as an undesirable place to live, the lack of nearby services and even the types of houses made it difficult to sell homes in the city sometimes referred to as "North Town," she said.

"It just wasn't a great place to live," said Pitterle, who rented a house in North Las Vegas in the early 1990s.

Fast forward more than a decade and now people no longer think twice about purchasing a home in North Las Vegas, she said.

"Now you have all the stores, all the restaurants -- everything you could want is there now. It's not so difficult to sell," Pitterle said. "But with that comes costs, and the prices aren't that much better than other places in town."

In fact, new houses in North Las Vegas have experienced a greater increase in price than the rest of the valley, according to the local research firm SalesTraq.

In the first nine months of 2005, median new home prices have increased 133 percent in North Las Vegas compared with 2001, which was before the rapid price escalation, based on statistics from SalesTraq. During the same period, median new housing prices increased 84 percent for the entire valley.

But the large increase doesn't mean that North Las Vegas new home prices -- now at $320,821 -- have shot too far ahead of the rest of the valley, currently at $313,490 for 2005's first nine months.

Five years ago, North Las Vegas' median new home price of $137,476 was far below the rest of the valley's median new home price of $170,089.

"What that means is it's no longer the older-timers' stymied concept of North Las Vegas -- it's the new North Las Vegas," SalesTraq President Larry Murphy said. The increase in housing prices, Murphy added, "really makes a strong statement that North Las Vegas has a lot to offer."

While a handful of builders were selling houses in North Las Vegas, such as Pardee's El Dorado master plan, most in the local real estate industry point to Aliante, which opened for home sales in early 2003, as the catalyst for growth and a resurrection of the city's image.

"I think it (Aliante) has done a good job, just as when Green Valley Ranch started to develop, some of the attitudes toward Henderson started to change," said Fafie Moore, broker/owner of Realty Executives of Nevada. "The advent of a master-planned community gives credibility to an area."

When Pulte Homes and American Nevada Company jointly bid at a 2001 auction on the federal land that was to become Aliante, the two companies were taking a risk.

Pulte Homes and American Nevada are partners in North Valley Enterprises LLC, the developer of Aliante. American Nevada is owned by the Greenspun family, which owns the Las Vegas Sun.

"It was a new frontier for us as a developer; it was a different market," said Dea McDonald, Pulte vice president of land development and the Pulte representative in the joint venture.

"We were concerned because the market at the time was very segmented. A lot of builders were building small projects and entry-level homes. We were concerned about move-up and executive buyers in North Las Vegas and considered that to be a risk, albeit a calculated risk."

Aliante by almost any measure has been a huge success, McDonald said. Of the 7,000 houses planned for the community, more than 3,400 have been sold or are under development, he said.

"To look back at what we'd envisioned for the project compared to what was actually delivered, we nailed it," he said.

North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon said Aliante is a large part of the area's image shift and growth, but stressed that there actually is more building and development going on outside the master-planned community than in it.

The city will continue to grow with the upcoming federal land auction, he said. The Nov. 16 auction will include a 2,073-acre parcel and a nearby 601-acre parcel that will be auctioned off together, Bureau of Land management officials said. The opening bid is set at $522.4 million.

"The development community already refers to that as Aliante Two," Montandon said. "It will really continue to be a new master plan, whether they call it Aliante or another name."

In part, it's land that has helped North Las Vegas excel. While the rest of the valley is running short on space, not only for residential uses but commercial as well, North Las Vegas still has large open tracts.

"North Las Vegas represents some of the largest land mass that's left, but it's disappearing in a hurry," said Bob Gore, who has been buying and selling land throughout the valley for almost 20 years. Gore is a partner in McKinley Gore LLC at Becker Realty.

One thing is certain -- the types of homes built and sold in North Las Vegas, both in and out of the area's master plans, will continue to evolve.

Lots for custom homes, not widely available in North Las Vegas, are starting to be offered. One reason is because of the growth of the city's industrial business base.

Dan Doherty, an industrial broker at Colliers International, said many companies needing industrial buildings have located in Henderson because those business owners can own a custom home within the same city. That isn't possible right now in North Las Vegas, he said.

"In North Las Vegas we will see milliondollar custom home lots, $500,000 to $1 million production homes," he said. "It will help attract users to that area."

Moore said she was surprised at the number of custom-home lots currently available in that area during a recent search. She echoed what Doherty said, that the growth of businesses in North Las Vegas is in turn resulting in builders turning out a more expensive product.

"If you're babysitting your business, you don't want to spend another two hours on the road," she said.

It also helps when the real estate community is supportive of a community.

Gore said he gets numerous e-mails touting homes in North Las Vegas, but for the last several years those houses are advertised as being in Aliante or the "North Valley."

"There was never any mention of North Las Vegas," he said. "Three weeks ago I got an email for a Beautiful home in North Las Vegas' and I thought, Finally, success for that community."'

Jennifer Shubinski can be reached at 2598832 or at js@lasvegassun.com.