Las Vegas Luxury Real Estate Owners Take Note on Home-Price Gains

Luck and Las Vegas go hand in hand, right? Yes, but whether that luck is good or bad depends on whom you’re asking. Today I’m talking about the beneficial variety, and happy to do so. Las Vegas luxury real estate owners take note: Las Vegas was recently ranked the nation’s luckiest city for home-price gains since 2012.

The subject of luck comes up often in conversations around the Las Vegas valley, as you can imagine. There are an infinite number of opportunities to press, try, or turn around your luck at the casino and in daily life. Luck is pretty obvious when talking with folks exiting the casino, but real estate is also a gamble and benefits from a little luck.

We all work hard to get our lucky break in business or other chosen pursuits. For those who purchased luxury real estate in Las Vegas in January of 2012, your timing was impeccable. You may, in essence, have hit the jackpot.

Why is this? For one, that means you’ve been a part of the Las Vegas luxury real estate community for over four years now, and that is a fortunate position by default. That statement is an altogether biased opinion of course. Secondly, and with factual basis, home prices have improved, or appreciated, 75 percent since January 2012.

Like the fable, we in the Las Vegas luxury real estate segment search for the treasure at the end of the rainbow. For years, the gold remained as elusive as the Leprechaun. But now, market statistics and the general attitude of real estate professionals is one of optimism.

Recently, Zillow, the online real estate listing, and data mining company, released a report detailing the top markets in the U.S. with the largest value growth in home prices. I’m no less than thrilled to announce that Las Vegas made the top of the list.

As painful as it is to recall the dark days of the recession, it’s necessary to recount our steps to see how far we’ve come from rock bottom. In a real estate market nutshell: when it’s good, it’s great; when it’s bad, it’s harrowing.

These extremes make Las Vegas a bit of a lone wolf in the industry. We see a lot of investors, corporations, and high-net-worth individuals buy property in the valley. When their revenue streams are steady, they extend their fortunate standing with us by way of buying up inventory. Less inventory leads to higher property values because supply is limited. We like to see property values on the rise, because it signals a thriving market, and increases our asset portfolio.

The flip side of the coin is not as cheerful. When the economy began its downturn in 2008, property owners started to liquidate their holdings. As their businesses, income, cash flow decreased, they scrambled to find ways to offset this decline. Investors sold their rental units, corporations didn’t expand, construction came to a virtual standstill, and property values fell rapidly. We saw inventory reach flood levels, and keeping with the water analogy, a lot of homeowners underwater in their home valuations.

We, as a market, tumbled from the top spot to the bottom rung in a couple of years post-bubble burst.

In 2012, property values bottomed out, a bad thing for most, but also an opportunity for some. Investors know, either by instinct or superior software programs, when it is time to buy real estate for maximum returns. That is the case for our story today.

Reporting data from that time shows most of the transactions were cash, a green flag for us market watchers that investors are back in the game. Are they buying Las Vegas luxury real estate? Maybe, because they know at some point the valuations will rise, and they’ll be sitting on a cache of equity.

Most investors purchased rental-type homesteads, because when people are leaving their homes due to the inability to pay their mortgage, they have to rent. Either way, the activity triggered positive ripple effects for the <real estate market. Now here we are, four years down the line and talking about improvements in valuations.

What does this mean for you? If you are one of the lucky ones who purchased luxury real estate in Las Vegas around that time, know you made a superb decision.