Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
A view of the Newport Lofts condo building in downtown Las Vegas on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010.
Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011 | 2 a.m.
Reader poll
Sun archives
VEGAS INC
Real estate specialist Jack LeVine has during the past four months seen an intense and growing interest in downtown real estate.
It reminds him of the mid-2000s boom, when on the first day a home was listed for sale, 10 potential buyers would offer bids.
Something similar has happened in recent months, he says.
Prices today are far below the $100-$200 per square foot they were during the boom, but offers are coming in at more than the asking price, according to LeVine.
“I have a stack of buyers who want to buy downtown,” he says, listing them by occupation — a federal public defender, electrical engineer, museum curator, federal prosecutor, schoolteacher and artist, exotic dancer, freelance writer, Las Vegas city employee, a Zappos employee.
“This is the creative class, that’s who’s contacting me,” he said. “These are Baby Boomers whose kids are grown so they want to move downtown; these are people who don’t want to live in the ’burbs anymore.”
The rising prices haven’t lifted sales-price statistics, LeVine said, because so many are being sold by banks, which are less interested in getting top dollar. If a bank can get cash today at a lower price instead of waiting for a higher price with a 15- or 30-year mortgage, banks are taking the cash.
But the interest in downtown is being reflected in other ways, including projects experts believe will bring the amenities that have kept many from considering living in the area.
In April, Newport Lofts sold out. The 168-unit high-rise project at Hoover Avenue and Casino Center Boulevard was built in 2007.
This month, the Las Vegas City Council approved plans for 240 apartments at Casino Center and Coolidge Avenue by New York developer Barnet Liberman.
Liberman hopes to start construction next summer on the project that will be paid for in part with funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s transit-oriented development, or TOP, program. The project will feature affordable units with a 680-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment going for about $850 a month and a 920-square-foot, two-bedroom priced at $1,100 to $1,200 a month.
“That’s what you need for a city to grow is rental housing,” said Liberman, who has been involved in urban development for decades, including the first loft conversion in Manhattan in 1977.
“There shouldn’t be any barrier for lower-income people to be able to grow and prosper,” he said. “The only question for developers, guys like myself, is they’ve got to know that there’s a real solid, almost certainty that if they do A, B and C, then they get D. When you see that the city is behind you in terms of a common goal, it helps eliminate some of the risk.”
After his 240-unit building is finished, Liberman wants to begin construction on a 24-story, 1,150-unit apartment building on Charleston Boulevard at 4th Street. The City Council is expected to hear more about that during a meeting in November.
Other developers also believe affordable housing is crucial in the push for downtown’s redevelopment.
Richard Worthington, president and chief operating officer of the Molasky Group of Cos., envisions affordable housing downtown attracting the smaller shops needed for an area to thrive.
“This will just drive that kind of development, bring in the amenities needed downtown,” he said.
John Tippins, Northcap LLC owner and senior vice president at ST Residential, which owns and operates mid- and high-rise condos and multifamily properties, including the Ogden high-rise downtown (now 83 percent occupied), agreed with Worthington.
“You’ve got to have heads in beds,” Tippins said. “When people can actually live downtown, that’s the important thing to keep the momentum, which is snowballing right now.”
In some ways, the past and future of downtown’s turnaround is the same: The amenities are the thing.
Early last decade, when high-rise plans dotted maps of downtown on the city’s website (very few of those got built), doubts focused on the lack of grocery, hardware and other basic stores in the area. The suburbs are chockablock with theaters and hardware stores and supermarkets, so the living is easier.
The equation for downtown hasn’t changed much over the past six or seven years, says Robert Fielden, an urban planner and architect in Las Vegas for almost 50 years.
“There are bars and taverns, but most people don’t want to sit in a bar every night as entertainment,” Fielden says. “You need things for the average person to do. A library that is relatively close, neighborhood parks and green belts, theaters, dining that is affordable, the mom-and-pop kind of stores.”
Those simple amenities “are going to be so important because of the competition with everything out in the ’burbs.”
Still, real estate agents like LeVine are seeing growing demand for homes downtown. From his vantage point, “people are just waiting for homes to become available.”
ask a real estate agent if property is booming he will give you 100 reasons it is and you should buy
ask a car dealer he will give you 100 similar reasons
this is why articles like this cannot be trusted.
how much property do las vegas sun and respective families own? is this why they have articles ramping the market.
why dont you just ask rupert murdoch how to tap phones too and join the growing list of publishing companies partaking in their own interests manipulating the public, this is how i see articles like this
the economy is in very poor shape, property is going to take 20 years + to even start to increase in price , the credit crunch part 2 is on us, part 3 will be soon, greece is about to go bankrupt, other parts of europe will go bust , contagion will spread throughout the world again, USA is in deep crap too much debt, politicians who couldnt agree on what to have for lunch let alone 14 trillion of debt plus hidden debts, immigration dept who turn down foreign investors because of protectionism, the whole world is a sham with papers trying to ramp it up.
This is typical of realtors across the country. Pick any city, and one can find similar pronouncements from realtors as they attempt to create a market and buzz where one doesn't exist. In the vacuum of profitability which is Las Vegas real estate, this is hardly unexpected from a realtor.
It is only too bad the Sun chose to be co-opted and make this bit of obvious marketing a front page story.
People are Not waiting for homes to become availble, waiting for the credit score to get better,becuse thay walked away from a subprime lender, now they have to rent.The good part for Levine he can sell them in 7 years as condos to the dead beats for more money and they will pay the price,just like they are now.
I think downtown living is a good idea, but in it's current format, it isn't affordable. I'm not sure about the Newport Lofts, but the Ogden is owned by the taxpayers of the United States. The developers couldn't rent the units profitably and went bankrupt. The units are currently being rented for prices far below building cost. I'm guessing downtown residential development will require 35% in subsidies (grants, incentives, etc.) to be affordable. I don't know if the City and it's citizens want to spend that much to support it.
Interesting article. I am not currently in the market to buy but nonetheless an interesting read.
RE: Markp- try to have a good day! Take life one day at a time.....
"This month, the Las Vegas City Council approved plans for 240 apartments at Casino Center and Coolidge Avenue by New York developer Barnet Liberman."
You've got to be kidding me. Here we go again. These people are so corrupt. There are dozens of nice homes for sale and rent w/in a couple of miles of downtown, at good prices, and their owners are suffering. You can't bring them back by building more and more.
Oh, yeah, and let's not forget the empty apartments already there...Corruption is so rampant in this city, and the newspapers don't even cover it, basically.
There are plenty of homes for rent within a few miles of driving for about the same rent that a 1 bedroom apartment goes for. I can't see the justification of paying so much for 620 sf.
The areas near Newport and Soho still have issues. I see a lot of scrubs walking, begging, hanging around those areas each and everyday. It's the city, I realize that...but something gets under my skin about living there with that under my nose everyday. I wouldn't walk the neighborhood at night.
Pushing downtown is getting old...
Downtown 3.0 is coming, and 2012 is the year it happens.
Okay, reality check here folks:
1. Jack Devine sells and resells used stylish single family homes in neighborhoods around the edges of downtown, not IN downtown.
2. There were just 5 high-rise towers built in the first boom with 1,400 units but all those got stuck in the real estate bubble and most units have worked their way out as cheap condos or rental apartments.
3. ST Residential manages the Ogden as apartments but cannot prove that they have clear title to the property yet.
4. Juhl is still in foreclosure and bankruptcy, and is empty, save for perhaps 31 units that closed
early. More than 300 units sit empty today.
5. There are more than 40 dirt lots available downtown immediately to build housing upon that were formally entitled high-rise sites. Land values pused as high as $275 / square foot under new city hall and the empty blocks planned around it by the huge land speculation that went on last
decade. Today, land values are back where they were before the rush and could support affordable and low-rise housing.
6. There is no bank or private financing for any private development projects, housing or otherwise yet, not since 2008. There are no HUD or other federal funds to solely fund an affordable housing project.
7. There is a library downtown, by the way, the homeless love it. It is in that Predock building. You want connectivity: Build Jan's people mover so the Ogden trendoids can get to the library.
I sure hope Star Trek opens at the Neopolis
fosimmons, is it that Argentina is 92% catholic? Is Bush catholic? I know Kennedy was. Maybe you are some anti catholic religion, You never cease to amaze me in your comments. Read about Argentina here, a State department report.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/26516.h...
We should wish we were like them, did you know many south american countries are offering help to the European union mess? they want to loan them money. About 25 years ago S. America was in a bad situation, so what goes around comes around.
Let's blame Bush for Obamas' job act when that fails!~
"..."people are just waiting for homes to become available."
That's a LIE. 'Nuff said about that, and Jack LeVine.
And Gunowners4Obama is correct: The new city council is just as corrupt as the last, for rubber-stamping this latest construction fraud which will lose money for investors/we taxpayers. NOBODY needs rabbit hutch-like 630 sq. ft. boxes when they can rent an entire single-family home, Downtown, for the same amount -- $850.
THANK YOU, City Council, for further destroying real estate prices and the future tax base of inner Las Vegas.
If this is P-Reza's Downtown 3.0, I'll pass. Hopefully 4.0, or at least 5.0, will show true signs of recovery. I'll be here waiting.
Whatever they do with the "Las Vegas Core," it should be done with being SUSTAINABLE in mind! That means it should be recycling previously built lots, use alternative energy, have a sustainable water supply. Of course, a well planned community concerns itself with parks, libraries, markets, and cultural ammenities to provide citizens a balanced lifestyle with their living environment.
Blessings to planners with the above in mind!