Hopeful buyers line up for a roll call Friday morning at the sales office for Sunset Cliffs condominiums. Sales begin today, yet some people have camped out since Tuesday. Photo by Isaac Brekken. People hoping to land one of the 48 units that will be released today at Sunset Cliffs find a spot of shade while waiting Friday. More than 115 people waited to sign up for today's first release. Photo by Isaac Brekken.

It was a bargain they couldn't refuse.

Prospective buyers began lining up Tuesday for today's grand opening of Sunset Cliffs, a condominium project under construction at Pebble Road and Durango Drive in southwest Las Vegas. By the time the sales office opens at 8 a.m. today, more than 115 potential buyers will have camped out in tents and cars to get their names on a waiting list for the 48 units in the community's first release.

The big draw? New homes starting at 1,123 square feet for around $170,000. In a market where the median home value exceeds $300,000, finding a property for under $200,000 often means buying an older condo conversion with less than 1,000 square feet of space.

Heath Hostetler, a Realtor who helped form the Sunset Cliffs waiting list but is not a community employee, said several of his clients were interested in buying there because homes are $30,000 to $40,000 less than comparable properties in the area.

Hostetler said he doesn't believe the buyer queue at Sunset Cliffs portends significant supply issues in the Las Vegas housing market. Local home builders are delivering about 30,000 new units a year, and the Multiple Listing Service of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors shows about 16,000 resale listings in the Las Vegas Valley. In addition, about 17,000 apartments are scheduled for conversion to condominiums, local research company Home Builders Research reported this year. Hostetler said he hasn't recently seen campers waiting out grand openings at other communities.

"The market has tons of inventory available, but sellers (of resale homes) are asking inflated prices because of the price increases we saw one to two years ago," he said. "Sunset Cliffs is really affordable, and it makes sense to buyers."

Fred Ahlstrom, a developer of Sunset Cliffs, said the community is affordable compared with other new developments in the area because of its high density, which is about 17 units per acre. Building more homes per acre allows the company to charge lower prices, he said.

Melissa, a prospective Sunset Cliffs buyer and casino floor supervisor who wouldn't give her last name, said she has "passively looked" for homes in the community's price range since she moved to Las Vegas six months ago from Detroit. Given her price constraints, Melissa -- No. 86 on the waiting list -- has mostly encountered condo conversions, but she'd prefer fresher construction.

"I don't like the idea of a renovated house. I don't want to buy in a 20- or 30-year-old complex," she said. "I'm excited about this location, and the price is fair."

Melissa said that service workers are having an especially difficult time finding affordable new construction.

"This insurgence of California people has taken property values sky-high," she said. "There are so many workers below (supervisors). No one sees the people who do the menial jobs. Where do they even live?"

Matthew Jacobsen, a graduate student in physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, showed up at Sunset Cliffs Thursday afternoon and landed at No. 100 on the waiting list. This is his second attempt to buy a condominium and leave the Boulder Highway apartment complex he lives in; he said unresponsive salespeople and construction-defect litigation, which often makes banks reluctant to lend on a property, scuttled his previous effort.

"I don't have a huge budget. I've been watching for something that stands out," said Jacobsen, who recently moved to Las Vegas from Oregon. "I have a good feeling about this area."

Melissa and Jacobsen both said that if they come away empty-handed today, they plan to keep their names on the waiting list for future releases. Their odds seem decent: Sunset Cliffs will have 368 homes when it's built out in about two years, Ahlstrom said.