Housing

The 58 homeowners who bought into Astoria Homes’ Hillside community in northwest Las Vegas watched their pool water turn green and their park grass turn brown when the development entered foreclosure.

Short sales are making up a larger percentage of distressed home listings in Las Vegas, but banks are still dragging their feet on approval, local real estate agents said.

Construction has resumed at Mira Villa condominiums in Las Vegas with a new general contractor and a commitment from lenders to complete the 113-unit first phase by late summer, a marketing executive said Monday.

Construction has stopped on a portion of the Cosmopolitan’s west tower while some floors go through a redesign, sources familiar with the project said.

With the pep talk from real estate agents contradicted by doom-and-gloom reports on the housing industry, nobody seems to really know if or when the market will begin to recover.

That screeching sound heard throughout Las Vegas Valley is the brakes being applied not only to large-scale Strip projects, but to many of the residential and mixed-use projects planned for the outskirts of town and outlying rural areas.

Average apartment rent has remained relatively flat in Las Vegas with occupancy down slightly from a year ago, Las Vegas-based Applied Analysis research firm reported.

Foreclosures have doubled in Las Vegas from a year ago and the next wave of adjustable-rate mortgage resets could deepen the misery for an already severely depressed housing market, experts in the housing industry said.