REAL ESTATE:

See something you like? A guide for house hunters

Five local homes show that opportunity lies in depth of market’s fall

Sunday, March 29, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Real Estate in Crisis

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With cash in hand, home investors reemerge in Las Vegas (3-27-2009)
Report: Las Vegas home values fall 28 percent in year (3-24-2009)

At the height of the real estate boom, home buyers were braced to pay upward of $400,000 for a two-story stucco house. Good news for sellers, bad news for buyers.

That was then.

These days, buyers are buoyant over the great deals in the valley, and sellers are wondering what happened to the value of their homes, and when the free fall is going to bottom out.

Home prices have practically halved from their peak in July 2006. The median price of a new home that month was $355,435. It has dropped nearly 40 percent. The median price for an existing home — $289,500 in July 2006 — has fallen 51 percent, according to SalesTraq, a real estate analysis firm. What sold for $400,000 nearly three years ago can probably be had for $200,000 today.

Though there is some indication that prices are beginning to stabilize at the lowest end of the market, the middle and high ends are still fluid.

Here’s what your money will buy you this week.

It might be different next week.

PHOTOS BY STEVE MARCUS; MAPS BY CHRIS MORRIS / LAS VEGAS SUN

This one-story home in Spring Valley is a fixer-upper.

The garage door is dinged and much of the downstairs flooring has been stripped. The door to the garage is off its hinges and the appliances have been removed. The home’s exterior needs to be repainted, as does the swimming pool, whose blue paint is flaking and adorned in graffiti. The back yard’s retaining walls and the home’s exterior also were tagged. Weeds are scattered throughout the desert landscaping.

But the shell of a house has promise. It stands in a modest, if slightly aging, subdivision without a homeowners association a few miles from the Las Vegas Beltway. A face-lift may be necessary, but at least the government recognizes that: a Federal Housing Administration loan of $35,000 is available for restoration, says real estate agent Paul McCormick of the Prudential Americana Group. In many ways, this home resembles some of the emptying strip malls nearby: decaying but salvageable.

The agent’s honest spin: “And when people move to Las Vegas, they move here for palm trees and a pool. This home has both.”

Visitors to this stucco home enter through a foyer with a vaulted ceiling and into an open floor plan, with white tiles joining the living room, dining room and kitchen.

The kitchen is pristine: The cabinets are polished and the appliances remain. The upstairs loft is spacious — enough for a media corner and a family room, though the carpet has deep impressions from the furniture that once stood there. An archway connects the modest master bedroom to a bathroom with a tub and separate shower.

The back yard is just gravel, but large enough to accommodate playful toddlers.

The house, which isn’t in a homeowners association community, is near a country club, has a view of the Wynn to the east from the wide driveway and is a short walk from a playground.

“It’s a good starter house,” McCormick says.

This two-story Summerlin house, at the end of a cul-de-sac, evokes a Tuscan feel with its stonework. The front entry opens onto a family room, which like most of the rest of the house is carpeted in chocolate tone. (The kitchen is tiled.) The amenities are a cut-above: a walk-in closet on the first floor with shelving and a media control unit; a large back yard anchored by a pool and spa that has been properly maintained; and sizable bedrooms with ample closets. The highlight of the three-car garage: custom floor-to-ceiling cabinets on two walls.

The home’s price recently fell 10 percent, but it’s Summerlin, so there’s a catch: $4,038 for community infrastructure improvements. Activities aren’t lacking here: There’s a park nearby with a beach volleyball court, tennis and basketball courts across Town Center Drive, and the Las Vegas Beltway is about a mile away.

This sprawling one-story estate home, in a gated Green Valley neighborhood, is remarkable for its lushly landscaped back yard with pepper, lemon and orange trees. The owner liked to run the waterfall from the elevated spa into the sparkling pool below when hosting poker nights, says real estate agent Steve Shanafelt of Coldwell Banker. There’s also an outdoor sound system, and cameras monitor the property.

The walls of the Spanish-tiled home are done in earth tones, with a fireplace-equipped family room off the kitchen, and the formal living room also has a fireplace.

A third fireplace divides the master bedroom from its bathroom, where a jet-equipped tub complements a separate shower.

Because there hasn’t been much interest in the house, the owner is leaning toward renting it. “We’d rather rent it than give it away,” Shanafelt says.

Half the delight of this Eagle Hills home in Summerlin is just getting there: You navigate meandering streets and multiple roundabouts off Town Center Drive before passing through a guard-monitored gate. Eagle Hills’ roads are winding, with islands of mature palm trees in the middle of cul-de-sacs.

The entrance to the one-story ranch home unfolds into a expansive living room with a high vaulted ceiling. Liberal use of glass along the back wall offers views of the manicured back yard. Two bedrooms share one side of the house, with an L-shaped office and the master bedroom with wood laminate floor on the other. Its bathroom has an Asian-themed vessel sink, a shower with two heads, a tub and a fireplace. One of the two smaller bedrooms has a projection monitor mounted to the ceiling. And there’s a central music control off the kitchen, which features granite countertops, stone and stainless steel appliances.

The price of the home dropped to $960,000 this month, notes real estate agent Aaron Auxier of the Shapiro & Sher Group. That’s the way of the market: tentative and prone to drop.

Discussion: 7 comments so far…

By judgesmales

3/29/09 at 7:54 a.m.

Suggest removal

"These days, buyers are buoyant over the great deals in the valley ..."

Who says "buyers are buoyant" and the deals are "great"?

Oh, the Sun did. What's your source on this? Oh, just your gut feeling?

Put away the pompons and the cheerleader skirts. No matter how much the Sun shills for the local real estate market with unsubstantiated drivel like the above quote, you can't talk a market back to boom times. OK, so just stop it.
By enlatarde

3/29/09 at 8:14 a.m.

Suggest removal

ONLY 1 WAY FOR THINGS TO IMPROVE. WE NEED TO SUPPORT EACH OTHER. BY THIS I MEAN BUYING U.S. PRODUCTS WHENEVER POSSIBLE. THE POLTICOS WON'T TELL YOU THAT DUE TO FREE TRADE (WE NEED FAIR TRADE). CAN'T HAVE A WORKING ECONOMY WITHOUT MAKING PRODUCTS. IT'S A VERY CONNECTED ECONOMY, WHEN SAM WALTON USED LOCAL SUPPLIERS, PEOPLE PROSPERED AND HE STILL HAD LOW PRICES. NOW.....
By anthemccresident

3/29/09 at 8:39 a.m.

Suggest removal

last two homes are still way overpriced and the owners haven't come to grips with reality...
By stevem

3/29/09 at 9:16 a.m.

Suggest removal

you can't make the snap judgement that those homes are overpriced without looking at the comps...and zillow.com isn't good enough, guys.

what i'm afraid is happening is that everyone is rushing out to buy a home to turn it into a rental property and you have a steady increase in unemployment so there won't be any jobs to bring people in to fill those new rental homes.

until we see 3 or 4 months in a row of visitor volume at the airport increasing i wouldn't go near a house here.
By williamandbonnie

3/29/09 at 11:33 a.m.

Suggest removal

We looked at homes in the Vegas area during 2006/07. At the time, some builders were conducting lotteries: Throw your name in a hat and if you were the lucky draw, you could be first in line to buy the next available home. We weren't quite ready to retire, so we stepped back and didn't get swept away by the running herd. Thank God we didn't buy! Of course, if you weren't lucky or hesitated, then be prepared to pay another 10% or so... We intend to visit again late this fall and have another look, but I wouldn't touch anything for LESS than 1/2 the price of 2 years ago. Also, I would like to know where the water is going to come from 10 years down the road...
By MrVincent

3/29/09 at 2:34 p.m.

Suggest removal

"Also, I would like to know where the water is going to come from 10 years down the road..."

You just asked the 10 billion dollar question.
By anthemccresident

3/30/09 at 9:08 a.m.

Suggest removal

hey steve, i don't need any overrated realtor to tell me that the last 2 homes are overpriced. they are priced at 90% of the high water. if you think that they are worth anywhere close to the asking price then i have a 9 billion project on the west side of the Strip for you....