Friday, January 21, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Expert sees upside for high-rise condos

Marketing Solutions owner foresees closings hitting 2,000 to 3,000 this year

A worker navigates steelwork Thursday during construction at Panorama Towers. High-rise condo developments are hot locally. Photo by Jeff Scheid.

While not all of the high-rise luxury condominiums proposed in Las Vegas will get built, the bulk of those mapped and approved are already sold and under construction, a real estate consultant said Thursday.

Nearly 17,000 units in 122 buildings have been announced and that may only scrape the surface of the market in Las Vegas, said Steve Bottfeld, owner of Marketing Solutions.

It's hard to determine the depth of the luxury condo market here, but Bottfeld expects to see 2,000 to 3,000 closings this year and said the number will continue to grow.

"You're going to see more high-rise and more midrise than you can shake a stick at and it's going to work," Bottfeld said at Crystal Ball 2005, a housing forecast that drew about 600 people at the Tropicana. "The Las Vegas consumer is changing. They're more educated, they have more money and they want time conservation."

The high-rise project closest to completion is Metropolis, an 18-story development by Houston's Randall Davis on Debbie Reynolds Drive, facing Desert Inn Road.

Not far behind are SoHo Lofts in downtown Las Vegas, Panorama Towers on Industrial Road, the fourth tower of Turnberry Place on Paradise Road and The Residences at MGM Grand.

A number of midrise luxury condos have also broken ground, including Manhattan and Boca Park on Las Vegas Boulevard South and Vegas Grand on Swenson Street.

The highest price listed in the "Hi-Rise Hot Sheet" published by Bottfeld and SalesTraq President Larry Murphy is $35 million for a unit at the Summit, the largest of the proposed developments at 73 stories on the northeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue.

"There are these whiz-bang investors coming from Asia willing to pay whatever," said Richard Plaster, president of Signature Homes. "The underlying fundamentals of the housing market are strong, but not that strong."

The lowest price is $139,900 for Las Vegas Central, a 51-story proposed project by Bruce Langson on Sierra Vista Drive, between Paradise and Swenson.

The value of the projects on the hot sheet, which included time share and midrise condos, was nearly $10 billion and only a fraction of the projects listed their values.

Among the top-valued projects were the Majestic by Conrad Hotels at the former site of the La Concha motel on the Strip at $4.2 billion and The Residences at MGM and Trump Tower each at $1 billion.

Richard Lee, public relations director for First American Title Co. of Nevada, said high-rise development is being driven by land prices that have reached $4 million for small parcels off the Strip.

"We no longer look at dirt as price per acre or even per square foot," Lee said. "It's gotten so expensive, you've got to look at what you can put on it. The more units you put on it, the more expensive the dirt."

He couldn't quantify how many of the 80 or so proposed high-rises will come to fruition, but he said it's a lot more than people think.

"Who knows how big and deep the market is for people from all over the world who want a piece of Las Vegas. A condominium gives everybody a piece of Las Vegas," Lee said.

He said 50 high-rise projects have been proposed between Sahara Avenue and McCarran International Airport.

Bottfeld said high-rise development will succeed in Las Vegas because the aging baby boomers in the United States and their European counterparts have accumulated wealth from their parents, the World War II generation, and are looking to buy condos for retirement and second homes.

"You can't go wrong investing in a high-rise in this town if you're going to be here more than a week," he said.