When your house plunges in value and you can’t afford the mortgage, it can be tempting to short sell to friends or relatives and just rent from them. It’s a temptation some Las Vegans act on, even though it can send them to jail.
After a few months on top, Nevada no longer has the nation’s highest foreclosure rate. It has the second highest. One in every 305 homes statewide had a foreclosure-related filing last month.
The mothballed ManhattanWest project, a visible scar of Las Vegas’ building bust, has been sold for pennies on the dollar and is earmarked for completion.
Two thousand people are expected to converge downtown today for the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce’s annual Business Expo. The trade show at the World Market Center is slated to include 170 exhibitors.
Home prices kept climbing in Las Vegas last month but remained well below the prices of the hyper-inflated boom years. The median price of a previously owned single-family home sold in Southern Nevada in May was $170,000, up 33 percent.
Las Vegas’ economy relies heavily on gamblers, conventioneers and vacationers. It’s a service economy — and, perhaps not surprisingly, it’s nearly dead last in the country for its share of technical jobs.
After buying a lavish nearby mansion, Wayne Newton is moving out of the bitterly contested Casa de Shenandoah — and he’s taking his Arabian horses with him. The famed crooner, who has lived at the iconic Las Vegas estate since the 1960s, plans to leave by month’s end with his wife, Kathleen, and their daughter, Lauren, a person familiar with the matter told the Las Vegas Sun on Tuesday.
When retiree Shelley Chin taught junior high school in Henderson, she told her students about people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, billionaire businessmen whose hard work paid off big.
If you live in a valley apartment complex, odds are you soon could get a new landlord. Investors are snapping up local apartment buildings at the fastest pace seen in years, thanks to low prices, cheap financing and a plethora of potential tenants. Las Vegas has a large number of renters, as many residents can't buy homes because of past foreclosures, bad credit or financial hardship.
Warren Buffett’s proposed buyout of NV Energy took many Nevadans by surprise Wednesday. But it was on a predictable path the day after: The target company’s stock price soared, and lawyers began prowling for shareholders who want to sue for selling too low.
With investors buying houses and hacking down the inventory, the price of distressed homes is rising faster in Nevada than in any other state, a new report shows.
Yackira expects to remain as CEO, doesn't foresee layoffs
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Next time you pay your power bill, just send the check to Warren Buffett. The billionaire investor’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. reached a $5.6 billion cash deal to acquire NV Energy.
Las Vegas’ housing market is bouncing back with higher prices, rising values and a growing pipeline of construction plans. But not everyone is thrilled with a key reason for the upswing: investors.
Las Vegas’ underwater mortgage woes keep showing signs of improvement — but also remain worst in the country. Some 54.3 percent of valley homeowners with mortgages were underwater in the quarter ending March 31.
It’s tough getting people’s attention at RECon, the retail industry trade show, with its 30,000 people and 1,000 exhibitors. But repair guy Ray Salzer has found a way: fart sounds and plumber’s cracks.
On the heels of some store closings, Town Square has snagged several new retail tenants. But like any other retail hub, Town Square, located south of the Strip, has had turnover.
Homebuilders in the country’s largest cities are getting ready for a boost of work, but only in Las Vegas are they ratcheting up plans as foreclosure activity rises, a new study shows.
After some chilly years, Las Vegas’ luxury housing market is heating up. There were 85 sales of million-dollar homes in the three months ending March 31, up from 39 deals in the same period last year.
A few years ago, Lake Las Vegas was on the verge of collapse. Foreclosures swept through the bankrupt Henderson project as home values and retail sales plunged. Shuttered golf courses turned brown. The project’s only casino closed because an adjacent hotel locked its doors. Even a man-made waterfall was turned off. Now, the lavish project described for years as a financial bust is slowly nursing itself back to health. Home prices are on the upswing, hotel occupancy is inching higher, and new tenants are joining the retail district. Since July, Wall Street billionaire John Paulson’s firm has bought more than 900 acres of land there.
A fast-growing Silicon Valley company is gobbling up Las Vegas office space as it moves into Nevada and, ironically, takes over the offices of a group that works to bring new companies to the state.
The investment industry’s SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, or SALT, held this week at the Bellagio, featured a who’s who of global politics and business. But despite the fact that thousands of people watched them speak, not a word of what they said can be shared publicly.
he Panorama Towers condo project offers high-rise luxury living near the Strip. It also offers high-level security with dozens of cameras, video-phones and fingerprint scanners.
Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate in the country again last month despite having fewer distressed homes. One in every 360 housing units statewide had a foreclosure-related filing in April.
The percentage of Nevadans who are months late on their mortgage payments is falling, but it remains well above the national average. Nevada had a mortgage delinquency rate of 9.12 percent last quarter.
There are good reasons why developers have avoided new commercial real estate projects in Las Vegas. Vacancy rates are sky high, rents are basement low, and it’s anyone’s guess whether the market will fully recover from the building bust. But one area of real estate is seeing a burst of activity, though some analysts question how long it will last. At least 910,000 square feet of industrial space is being built in the valley, with more in the pipeline.
Southwest Gas Corp. narrowly raised its first-quarter profit after seeing a turnaround in its pipeline construction services unit. The Las Vegas-based natural gas provider on Friday reported earning $80.8 million of net income.
When John Sullivan took charge of First Security Bank of Nevada two years ago, Las Vegas’ banking industry was in shambles. Six local banks had been shut down, and almost every lender was losing money. Even if they wanted to make loans, the bankers lacked capital and credit-worthy clients who could repay a debt. Fast forward to 2013. What a difference a few years makes.
Flipping homes in Las Vegas is not as common as it used to be, but it’s still a lucrative business. The Las Vegas Valley is the second best place in the country to “flip” a home, according to a new report from RealtyTrac.
Firefly Tapas Kitchen & Bar, the popular Las Vegas restaurant that temporarily closed last week after diners reported getting sick, was cited for a range of health-code violations, including fruit flies and small moths at the restaurant.
A popular Las Vegas tapas restaurant that closed last week after a supposed salmonella outbreak had received fluctuating health-inspection grades over the years.
A Lake Las Vegas luxury hotel with a history of financial woes is changing its name for the second time. The 349-room Ravella at Lake Las Vegas will become a Hilton-branded hotel by June, said Benson Lee, regional director of hotel operations for landlord Kam Sang Co. The Mediterranean-style hotel already is listed on Hilton Worldwide’s website as the Hilton Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa.
Just months after reaching a deal with NASA to build an inflatable space room, local entrepreneur Robert Bigelow is working with agency officials to find ways for business executives to participate in missions that could include trips to the moon and Mars.
After bottoming out a year ago, Las Vegas home values have soared and are expected to rise further, boosting the region’s fragile economic recovery. The Las Vegas Valley’s median home value was $138,800 as of March 31, at the end of the first quarter, up 22.3 percent from a year earlier, according to a report out Wednesday from Seattle-based research firm Zillow. Local home values hit bottom in the first quarter last year at $113,500.
Las Vegas' empty office space hit an all-time high last quarter as rental rates continued to slide. The valley’s office market had a record 26.2 percent vacancy rate in the three months ending March 31.
Stung by a weak economy, Las Vegas has some of the fewest economic opportunities and highest stress levels in America, a new report says. The Las Vegas Valley is 28th out of the 30 largest metro areas for its “wallet wellness."
Driving around the valley, they are hard to miss: Billboards advertising ER wait times at Sunrise, Sunrise Children’s, MountainView and Southern Hills hospitals.
The local mini-spending boom is raising fears that people once again are taking on too much debt and returning to the bad habits of the boom era — buying stuff they can’t afford.
Shoppers stroll through Wal-Mart on Lake Mead Parkway in Henderson filling their carts with food, alcohol, toilet paper, kitchenware and clothing. You can buy almost anything at the superstore — including health care. Just steps from the cash registers, patients can get treated for bronchitis, high blood pressure or depression. Retail health clinics have spread around the Las Vegas Valley in recent years in chain stores and strip malls.
Former baseball star Greg Maddux was one of the best pitchers ever, thanks to his near perfect control on the mound. But in real estate, just like in baseball, you can’t win ‘em all.
The home construction business keeps gaining speed in Las Vegas, but a local analyst is warning people not to get too excited. A total of 1,633 new homes were sold in the Las Vegas Valley in the three months ending March 31, almost double the same period last year.