patrick.net

JonSilence says

LasVegasWinner: I appreciate your insights from long term experience in LV. When you say "investors are coming from all over the world", I assume you are referring to the influx of those who are buying rental properties, correct? If so, as a result, aren't we now seeing a glut of such properties on the rental market, resulting in competition for renters and price wars to get them? I'm curious: Of all the properties you own in LV, how many are handled by property management companies? What has your track record been with regard to tenants, vacanicies, etc.? I've had my property less than a year, am going on my third tenant, and third month out of pocket. Thus far, not my idea of a good investment.

There is a glut in the small 1200-1500 sq ft 3+2, the ones that sell for $60,000 to $90,000, but are not in good areas. Location is the key, as always. Been a rental house landlord since 1994. Everything with property manager. I search for market rent, list i there and then start dropping $25 every week after first 2 weeks.. Average vacancy 45 DAYS

Hey, I live and work in Vegas. A friend of mine just rented a really nice 3/2 in Summerlin with a pool for 1,100/mo. Had plenty to choose from. Good luck!

JonSilence says

Mine has a pool and is in what appears to be a nicer neighborhood. Are those things worth an extra $250 per month? I guess the market will tell me....

Seems to me that the market already has.

If it does not sell then the price is higher then recent comp sales,if it does not rent then the rent is higher then current comp rents.

I maintain my earlier question about there being an investor real estate bubble.

While it's true that every house will sell... eventually... it's not quite as simple with rentals.

When you sell, you don't care who buys it, but when you rent, you definitely should care who you're renting to. As you're forced to lower the price, you begin to attract more of the people you don't want to rent to.

Buy a house to live in it.

Thanks to everyone here for your input & insights. Good News and BAD news: Good News--Looks like I have found a tenant for my Summerlin property at $1225 per month, down $225 from the $1450 I was getting through all of 2011. BAD NEWS: My LV property manager has been doing research and says that 21 rental properties came onto the market last year from Feb 1-14 2011, compared to the 1,440 that have come onto the market Feb 1-14 this year in 2012. That's over 65 times MORE rental properties on the market today than a year ago. She says that indicators are that we have not hit bottom and that its going to get worse...
W T F ???? :(

Renters tend to be nomadic. We have to be. Without a lease, WE could be given 30 days notice at any time. The positive to that is we can do the same.

As such, we're also less tied to a particular neighborhood. School continuity for kids is nice, but if you can't afford it, you can't afford it. Faced with moving, we have multitudes of options, and we can move far, far easier than an "owner".

If the world was filled with nothing but investor-owned properties, there would always be a lot of homes on the market to choose from. Renters only have trouble in low turnover markets, which tend to have fewer rentals.

So while I still think it's a bubble, the bigger it gets, the easier it should actually become for renters. When everybody dumps their listings on Craigslist at once, it's for sure a buyers market!

it sounds like you need some more due diligence. Call me paranoid but I dont trust what anyone tells me regarding the real estate market. I need to see things with my own eyes because It seems like everyone involved has some type of agenda.

@lasvegaswinner, You are full of it. I live here. Saw your chart on housing median prices. Guess what? Recent spike is due to AB284 restricting robo signing. It has backed up the foreclosure process. When all of those REOs hit the market later this year your chart is going to look a lot different. I expect about a 10% to 15% drop in 2012. Then after the elections I expect a recession in 2013 and 2014. Interest rates will probably go up at the same time. I have no idea how big of a drop we will see then. I do predict that everyone in Vegas will be underwater, not just the current 85%.

Jon is in a good area. The entire real estate market is in a death spiral. Cut your losses and sell sell sell!

It's sure hard to use logic with all the emotional "doom and gloom" but the FACTS are that Feb 2012 sales in Las Vegas were almost 4000 homes, putting it as one of the best Feb in Las Vegas sales history.
50% of the sales are to Investors, and they are coming form all over the world.
I must assume that a lot more people with money feel good things are going to happen in Vegas.

LASVEGASWINNER says

I must assume that a lot more people with money feel good things are going to happen...

One must be careful with this though. This exact thought process was prevalent in 2006. "Buy RE, you CAN"T lose. Everyone is doing it, so it is obviously safe!" If one gets in early enough, good things can often happen. At this stage in the game though, it just seems like a stampede of the herd. I am willing to accept that I could be wrong here, but it makes almost no sense to me to be buying up properties with the intention of renting them out when everyone has been doing the same for years, and knowing that large institutional investors will likely be flooding the market with even cheaper rentals since they will pay considerably less for properties than the little folks.

To whom will all of these properties be rented to? Increasing the supply of a rentals with a fixed supply of renters only seems like a recipe for...well, it is pretty obvious at this point.

LASVEGASWINNER says

50% of the sales are to Investors, and they are coming form all over the world.

I guess all of them must be cannibal anarchists.

Get rich quick! Halelujah Jeeeezzzzuus.

wthrfrk80 says

Get rich quick! Halelujah Jeeeezzzzuus.

I love the parable of the poor fool that didn't buy when the Nazarean market was HOT and was destined to be priced out forever. Thankfully, the Savior came and bumped the conforming loan limit back up for him, thus providing the poor fool the ability to put 3.5% down on his dream house, and give thanks by paying interest to the Almighty for the remainder of his corporeal life. So heartwarming!

Jesus loves Ninja Loans!

wthrfrk80 says

Get rich quick! Halelujah Jeeeezzzzuus.

I's prayed to Jesus and gave $500 to his Minister. Jeesus is giving me my hundred-fold Increase thanks to this fixer upper I just found! Now, Lord, please send me a gay couple as renters so they'll fix the place up for free, In Jesus' name, Amen!

So much for rents going up, go ahead and raise them, I'll just get a room mate, or efficiency to defer costs. I'm seeing more rentals going up around me as well, they might have to start re-converting the condo's back into rentals again because they are piling up fast. Now imagine you bought a condo, and now your condoplex is turning into a rentalplex, real nice. Property management business is going to be booming for years.

This reminds me of when everyone was buying Las Vegas homes for 150k back in 2003. People were buying 5 to 10 homes at a time. It was crazy!

After buying, the homes were rented out while waiting for prices to go up. Are all these investors thinking they will hit it big when the price of LV homes go up in a few years and they sell at a profit? Not all the investors are in it for the long term. They are looking for quick profit.

What happens when there are so many rentals, the rent price drops to half the cost of the mortgage?

waiting_for_the_fall says

What happens when there are so many rentals, the rent price drops to half the cost of the mortgage?

It'll never happen. NOW is the time to buy! Hurry, hurry!

Vegas has changed so much over the past ten years. It's a shithole with a few nice areas thrown in.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/mar/21/police-identify-intruder-shot-summerlin/

Well, so much for the nicer areas...

LASVEGASWINNER says

but the FACTS

Hey, could we talk about the fact that Vegas is quickly running out of water? You know, since we're talking about facts and all.

Must be fun trying to sell homes in a desert hellhole.

It would seem that high energy costs would also place a cap on any major growth in these markets. Sure, your mortgage payment might be low but you might spend the same amount on fueling your car and cooling your home. When incomes are based on service sector work these little changes do matter.