According to my friend Adriana Mendez, "Lo siento mucho" is Spanish for "I'm very sorry."
As in, I'm very sorry, but I'm headed to Mexico early tomorrow morning, so I won't get around to getting you the figures I promised Monday regarding my "cat-skinning" method of buying down points for buyers.
You know how things get when you're about to go on vacation. Or maybe it's just me. In fact, there's a good chance it's just me. I've been listening to a "The Millionaire Real Estate Agent" CD in my car lately. It's basically a "How To" book on succeeding wildly in the real estate business. The author, Gary Keller (owner of my brokerage) is talking about how it's always amazing how much work you get done the day before going on a vacation, his point being that when you're intensely focused to get a task done, you'll amaze yourself at how much you can produce.
I probably should have ejected the CD right then and there. Because if I'm trying to find out how to make a million dollars from a guy who actually gets work done the day before a vacation, he and I are so disturbingly far apart that we're probably not going to find any common ground the rest of the way through the program.
My guess is that ol' Gary has always been an incredibly focused, organized cat. The kind of kid who finished his homework on the way home from school. He probably never dreaded Sunday nights like I dreaded Sunday nights. The weight of not having done any schoolwork for the entire weekend always bore down as Monday morning grew closer. The creeping panic-discomfort would begin around the time Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color came on at 6:00 CST. It didn't get any better during Bonanza, either. By the time I slunk off to bed I was a wreck.
I need to get advice on making millions of dollars from someone who...
...falls asleep after reading two paragraphs of anything,
...doesn't pay any attention to the road when he drives,
...answers too many emails immediately instead of time-blocking them,
...leans less toward carpe diem than to carpe manana,
...in short, I need to hear it from someone like me, not someone like Gary Keller.
That's like Reggie Bush trying to tell me how to change directions at full speed in mid-air, or Eddie Van Halen trying to tell me how to play "Eruption", or Hugh Hefner trying to tell me how to pick up women.
I guess if you need proof of my inability to have that laser beam focus Gary talks about, just read the last 6 or 7 paragraphs. A perfect attention deficit roadmap of how you get from Mexico to the Playboy Mansion West.
So, back to Mexico.
Come to think of it, Mexico wasn't even the point of this posting anyway. The point was to explain why the fabulously convincing documentation of the power of buy-downs wasn't going to be in this blog today as promised. Nor will anything else be in this blog until I get back from the jungles of the Yucatan next week.
So forgive me for the rambling. I'm going to the store now for some sunblock.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
My Favorite Neighborhoods, Pt. 1 - Rancho Nevada Estates
I got a phone call this morning from a man in Michigan. He's moving his family down here and wanted a neighborhood that was green. Not in the post-Inconvenient Truth sense of the word "green", but in the literal chlorophyll sense of the word. He wanted to see grass and trees outside of his house.
Whenever I hear things like this from buyers, I immediately think of Rancho Nevada Estates. This neighborhood sits on 77-acres smack dab in the heart of Las Vegas, next to the original spring-fed meadows that gave Las Vegas its name. The springs died out 50 years ago, but the neighborhood remains as close chronologically to those days as it is geographically. You can still see red-tailed hawks circling in the evenings and mornings, and great horned owls patrolling at night. 
Rancho Nevada Estates could be called a "classic Las Vegas neighborhood", but it could just as easily be called a "classic Georgia neighborhood." Or a "classic Michigan neighborhood." Or Texas. Or Pennsylvania.
In fact, it's so unlike any other Las Vegas neighborhood that it almost seems out of place here.
Built in the late 1960s by the Collins Brothers, these homes all have individual character that is all their own. And after 40 years of residential forestation, the vast variety of mature trees finish the job of individualization begun by the builders.
It became guard-gated about 10 years ago. And while that makes the neighborhood more exclusive, and increased the property values in there, it keeps it generally off-limits to the rest of the city, which is kind of a shame. Rancho Nevada Estates is, in my mind, like a residential museum. As a Realtor, I am still able to cruise through the neighborhood, and I always love driving the streets just to feel at home.
Cat-Skinning...An Alternative Method
With everyone thinking, reading and hearing about the credit crunch lately (it'd be interesting to see which has gotten more "ink"--actual or cyber--in the past two weeks, the credit crunch or Michael Vick), it's easy for buyers, sellers and agents to feel victimized by it.
But there are ways to offset that situation, or to at least better your odds in the current market.
Because credit has tightened, the market comes to a bit of a standstill. The "buyer's market" becomes less about saller's price than it does about buyer's ability. That's where sellers can change the equation to the benefit of both buyer and seller.
One way is to lessen the amount that a borrower actually has to borrow. The simplest way to do this is to help out with a buyer's closing costs. Pretty straight-forward, and pretty commonplace.
Another way, a more powerful way, is to buy down the buyer's mortgage rate, while retaining the same purchase price. I'll run some hard numbers for you as examples in Wednesday's blog. But what you need to know is that buydowns, carefully calculated, can benefit the buyer tremendously, and can give the seller considerably more "bang for the buck" than reducing the price by the same amount as the buydown.
Who knows when this "credit crisis" (as the media has fallen in love with calling it) will be in the past. But until it has passed, we've still got to be thinking of creative ways around it. Like anything, sitting around and waiting for it to get better ain't the answer.
But there are ways to offset that situation, or to at least better your odds in the current market.
Because credit has tightened, the market comes to a bit of a standstill. The "buyer's market" becomes less about saller's price than it does about buyer's ability. That's where sellers can change the equation to the benefit of both buyer and seller.
One way is to lessen the amount that a borrower actually has to borrow. The simplest way to do this is to help out with a buyer's closing costs. Pretty straight-forward, and pretty commonplace.
Another way, a more powerful way, is to buy down the buyer's mortgage rate, while retaining the same purchase price. I'll run some hard numbers for you as examples in Wednesday's blog. But what you need to know is that buydowns, carefully calculated, can benefit the buyer tremendously, and can give the seller considerably more "bang for the buck" than reducing the price by the same amount as the buydown.
Who knows when this "credit crisis" (as the media has fallen in love with calling it) will be in the past. But until it has passed, we've still got to be thinking of creative ways around it. Like anything, sitting around and waiting for it to get better ain't the answer.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Ramblings from an open house...
It's a little after two o'clock on a very hot Las Vegas Saturday afternoon. I'm hosting an open house with not much traffic.
The streets here in northwest Las Vegas are eerily deserted. Super Bowl Sunday deserted. Maybe everyone's on vacation. Maybe they've gone reptilian for the afternoon hours.
One person isn't inside in his air-conditioned home, though. The next-door neighbor to the east of this house is outside working with his dog. I admire that kind of dedication (both the owner's and the dog's). If I were the owner, I'd be inside watching golf in 72-degree comfort instead of being out in the midday sun. If I were the dog, I'd be biting my owner for having me out in the midday sun.
Seeing that reminds me of my old Labrador Retriever, Moose, who I got when he was an 8-week old puppy in November of 1993.
My friend Chris loaned me a book he used when he trained his Labrador back in Shawnee, Oklahoma back in 1970 or so.
"Kenny, back when I was in 8th grade," he started out in one of those reminiscent tones that I realized was going to turn into a "Glory Days" story, "I trained my Labrador Sheeba to be one of the best field dogs in the state using this book." The book, a birthday gift from his parents, was "Training Your Retriever, 4th Edition" by James Lamb Free. Inside it was an inscription from his parents.
I didn't really want to take the book for a couple of reasons.
First, I knew myself well enough to know that--whatever my new puppy's disposition--I, myself, didn't have the discipline or desire to train this dog. I wasn't ever going to have Moose fetch downed mallards or quail for me. I'd never need to have the dog pull in my fishing nets, being 240 miles from the nearest coastline. No, all I wanted out of the dog was to hang out and think I was the greatest biped in the world. Besides, I could already tell at that young aget that my boy, who though sweet, good-natured and affectionate, was not at all bright. He was, in fact, dumb.
The more significant reason, though, is that Chris is a totemic kind of guy. He imbues (charmingly, I might add) great significance to objects. It wasn't merely the information contained in Mr. Free's book that Chris was bestowing to me. It was the book itself. The very book. It was with that book that his Sheba had become the finest dog ever to walk, etc. I didn't want that kind of responsibility. Owning a dog was less responsibility, in fact, that possessing that book.
I took it and thanked him. Then it sat on my nightstand, waiting for enough time to pass that I could politely give the treasured tome back to him without raising any eyebrows.
About a month later, I came home and went into the bedroom and let out a Wilhelm scream that they're still talking about on Barnard Drive. Moose, who amazingly had never chewed a thing in the house in his first two months there, had methodically chewed "Training Your Retriever, 4th Edition" by James Lamb Free to pieces.
Despite the fact that there was delicious irony in my dog eating the book that was supposed to have transformed it into better dog, I was, nevertheless, beside myself. THE BOOK was ruined. It was as if the Director at the National Archives had, for some reason, loaned me the Declaration of Independence for a research project, and my 3-year old got into some Sharpies and drew ponies on it.
THE BOOK had been destroyed. I don't think the National Archives would have settled for a Kinko's Xerox of the document, and neither would Chris.
So I contacted a guy I knew at Peninsula Booksearch, a pre-internet resource to locate out-of-print books. It was my only chance, slim though it was.
Amazingly, a copy of James Lamb Free's 4th Edition of "Training Your Retriever" showed up at my house about a month later. It was in better shape than the one Chris had loaned me. So I scuffed the dust jacket up a little by sliding it on my hardwood floors from one side of the living room to the other to give it just the perfect "worn look".
Then there was the inscription. I solicited one of the art directors at the ad agency I worked at to look at the original inscription (that portion of the cover had been spared). He worked on a passable forgery for two days. On the third day, he crafted a perfect "To Chris on Your 14th Birthday, Love Mother and Dad".
That made me feel kind of creepy, forging a boy's parents' signatures. I would have felt less fraudulent forging checks. But it had to be done.
I swore everyone associated with the project to secrecy. Chris would NEVER find out about the incident and the ensuing subterfuge.
I gave him back the book and thanked him for it a few weeks later.
Incidentally, he finally did find out about it. About 10 years ago, he and I were sitting around and I guess my conscience got the best of me. Without giving him a reason, I told him we had to go to my office (where the original shredded copy of the book resided). I told him the whole story and, to my relief, he was thrilled by it, especially how much I'd gone through to pull the thing off. And, of course, being a writer himself, he delighted in the same irony I had about a dog--a seemingly dumb dog--was smart enough to destroy the tool intended to put him through his paces.
The streets here in northwest Las Vegas are eerily deserted. Super Bowl Sunday deserted. Maybe everyone's on vacation. Maybe they've gone reptilian for the afternoon hours.
One person isn't inside in his air-conditioned home, though. The next-door neighbor to the east of this house is outside working with his dog. I admire that kind of dedication (both the owner's and the dog's). If I were the owner, I'd be inside watching golf in 72-degree comfort instead of being out in the midday sun. If I were the dog, I'd be biting my owner for having me out in the midday sun.
Seeing that reminds me of my old Labrador Retriever, Moose, who I got when he was an 8-week old puppy in November of 1993.
My friend Chris loaned me a book he used when he trained his Labrador back in Shawnee, Oklahoma back in 1970 or so.
"Kenny, back when I was in 8th grade," he started out in one of those reminiscent tones that I realized was going to turn into a "Glory Days" story, "I trained my Labrador Sheeba to be one of the best field dogs in the state using this book." The book, a birthday gift from his parents, was "Training Your Retriever, 4th Edition" by James Lamb Free. Inside it was an inscription from his parents.
I didn't really want to take the book for a couple of reasons.
First, I knew myself well enough to know that--whatever my new puppy's disposition--I, myself, didn't have the discipline or desire to train this dog. I wasn't ever going to have Moose fetch downed mallards or quail for me. I'd never need to have the dog pull in my fishing nets, being 240 miles from the nearest coastline. No, all I wanted out of the dog was to hang out and think I was the greatest biped in the world. Besides, I could already tell at that young aget that my boy, who though sweet, good-natured and affectionate, was not at all bright. He was, in fact, dumb.
The more significant reason, though, is that Chris is a totemic kind of guy. He imbues (charmingly, I might add) great significance to objects. It wasn't merely the information contained in Mr. Free's book that Chris was bestowing to me. It was the book itself. The very book. It was with that book that his Sheba had become the finest dog ever to walk, etc. I didn't want that kind of responsibility. Owning a dog was less responsibility, in fact, that possessing that book.
I took it and thanked him. Then it sat on my nightstand, waiting for enough time to pass that I could politely give the treasured tome back to him without raising any eyebrows.
About a month later, I came home and went into the bedroom and let out a Wilhelm scream that they're still talking about on Barnard Drive. Moose, who amazingly had never chewed a thing in the house in his first two months there, had methodically chewed "Training Your Retriever, 4th Edition" by James Lamb Free to pieces.
Despite the fact that there was delicious irony in my dog eating the book that was supposed to have transformed it into better dog, I was, nevertheless, beside myself. THE BOOK was ruined. It was as if the Director at the National Archives had, for some reason, loaned me the Declaration of Independence for a research project, and my 3-year old got into some Sharpies and drew ponies on it.
THE BOOK had been destroyed. I don't think the National Archives would have settled for a Kinko's Xerox of the document, and neither would Chris.
So I contacted a guy I knew at Peninsula Booksearch, a pre-internet resource to locate out-of-print books. It was my only chance, slim though it was.
Amazingly, a copy of James Lamb Free's 4th Edition of "Training Your Retriever" showed up at my house about a month later. It was in better shape than the one Chris had loaned me. So I scuffed the dust jacket up a little by sliding it on my hardwood floors from one side of the living room to the other to give it just the perfect "worn look".
Then there was the inscription. I solicited one of the art directors at the ad agency I worked at to look at the original inscription (that portion of the cover had been spared). He worked on a passable forgery for two days. On the third day, he crafted a perfect "To Chris on Your 14th Birthday, Love Mother and Dad".
That made me feel kind of creepy, forging a boy's parents' signatures. I would have felt less fraudulent forging checks. But it had to be done.
I swore everyone associated with the project to secrecy. Chris would NEVER find out about the incident and the ensuing subterfuge.
I gave him back the book and thanked him for it a few weeks later.
Incidentally, he finally did find out about it. About 10 years ago, he and I were sitting around and I guess my conscience got the best of me. Without giving him a reason, I told him we had to go to my office (where the original shredded copy of the book resided). I told him the whole story and, to my relief, he was thrilled by it, especially how much I'd gone through to pull the thing off. And, of course, being a writer himself, he delighted in the same irony I had about a dog--a seemingly dumb dog--was smart enough to destroy the tool intended to put him through his paces.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Why you should buy a house right now...this very minute!
For starters, mortgage interest rates are still at historically low levels. No one knows when they’ll rise again, but everyone agrees they won’t come down significantly any time soon.
But with the sub-prime fallout, and with lenders closing down one after another, is there even any money to loan? It’s a fair question; one answered by my friend David Reed, the author of three best-selling books on the mortgage industry (Mortgage Confidential; Who Says You Can't Buy A Home?; and Mortgages 101). He wrote in this blog earlier in the month that those investors who pulled out of the alternative and sub-prime, mortgage-backed securities, are looking for “a place to park their pork.”
In other words, there’s money out there for qualified buyers. Especially here in Las Vegas. (Banks gotta eat, too. If they’re not loanin’, they’re groanin’.)
And you couldn’t ask for a healthier market in which to invest. Our economy is stronger than most metropolitan areas. Clark County added more than 96,000 new residents in 2006. A nice omen for the long-term strength of the local housing market. Over the next three years nearly 20,000 hotel rooms will be added here. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority estimates 1.8-1.9 new employees will be needed for every one of those rooms. (Can you say “Demand”?) Many will need to buy a home, a lot of others will need to rent. All of them will need a roof. And if you’ve got roofs, you’re sitting pretty. Gorgeous, in fact.
What’s more, with available land disappearing here, the law of supply and demand insists that prices will increase greatly over time.
That’s the key mindset for investing in real estate. Over time. The problems we’re having in this market now is that too many people thought of real estate as a quick money maker back in the boom. Real estate is historically the best long-term investment you can have. You want to double your money quickly? Go to the sports book and take your chances. But the sure thing over the long haul is, and always will be, real estate.
Now let’s go get some!
But with the sub-prime fallout, and with lenders closing down one after another, is there even any money to loan? It’s a fair question; one answered by my friend David Reed, the author of three best-selling books on the mortgage industry (Mortgage Confidential; Who Says You Can't Buy A Home?; and Mortgages 101). He wrote in this blog earlier in the month that those investors who pulled out of the alternative and sub-prime, mortgage-backed securities, are looking for “a place to park their pork.”
In other words, there’s money out there for qualified buyers. Especially here in Las Vegas. (Banks gotta eat, too. If they’re not loanin’, they’re groanin’.)
And you couldn’t ask for a healthier market in which to invest. Our economy is stronger than most metropolitan areas. Clark County added more than 96,000 new residents in 2006. A nice omen for the long-term strength of the local housing market. Over the next three years nearly 20,000 hotel rooms will be added here. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority estimates 1.8-1.9 new employees will be needed for every one of those rooms. (Can you say “Demand”?) Many will need to buy a home, a lot of others will need to rent. All of them will need a roof. And if you’ve got roofs, you’re sitting pretty. Gorgeous, in fact.
What’s more, with available land disappearing here, the law of supply and demand insists that prices will increase greatly over time.
That’s the key mindset for investing in real estate. Over time. The problems we’re having in this market now is that too many people thought of real estate as a quick money maker back in the boom. Real estate is historically the best long-term investment you can have. You want to double your money quickly? Go to the sports book and take your chances. But the sure thing over the long haul is, and always will be, real estate.
Now let’s go get some!
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
A Remembrance of Things Past
Does anyone else remember going to Starbucks as being more awe-inspiring a few years ago than it these days?
The magic, sadly, was gone. But the coffee was still good.
Last Tuesday evening I went into the first Starbucks I ever visited at Charleston and Rancho back in (I think) 1998 or 1999.
It was such a big deal back then. You walked in, tried to figure out what the names meant, and worried that you would be exposed as the coffee fraud that you were. All the other caf-tastic customers seemed to know exactly what they wanted. You faked your way through.
Once you finally ordered (a latte seemed exotic enough, but still safe), that's when the show began. The person who took you order would jabber something incomprehensibly fast and foreign to some blur in green a few steps away, who would, in turn, blurt the same gibberish back even louder and faster. The blur was simultaneously doing five or six different things and not, apparently, missing a beat. It was an absolute madhouse. A absolute perfectly run madhouse.
I remember thinking that mankind had evolved to a point Darwin would have scoffed at. Somehow, I felt lonely and left behind by this evolutionary mag-lev high-speed train. I knew I could never keep straight all the information flowing back and forth from Barista-to-Barista. Never. (Heck, I got fired from my last waiting job in 1986 because I couldn't keep straight the 5 different kinds of potato skins the Dallas restaurant I was working at served.)
It was something to behold.
Fast-forward to a week ago today. I was showing a home in Rancho Bel Air and was meeting my client at that Starbucks so we could get through the guard gate together in one car, rather than have to time our arrival precisely and deal with the guard in separate cars.
I was uncharacteristically early, so I went in and ordered a short (tall) cup of coffee.
I don't know if it's universal at all Starbucks now in 2007, but the frenzied pace was no longer there at that particular location. That crazy mile-a-second cross-talk was nowhere to be heard.
It was such a big deal back then. You walked in, tried to figure out what the names meant, and worried that you would be exposed as the coffee fraud that you were. All the other caf-tastic customers seemed to know exactly what they wanted. You faked your way through.
Once you finally ordered (a latte seemed exotic enough, but still safe), that's when the show began. The person who took you order would jabber something incomprehensibly fast and foreign to some blur in green a few steps away, who would, in turn, blurt the same gibberish back even louder and faster. The blur was simultaneously doing five or six different things and not, apparently, missing a beat. It was an absolute madhouse. A absolute perfectly run madhouse.
I remember thinking that mankind had evolved to a point Darwin would have scoffed at. Somehow, I felt lonely and left behind by this evolutionary mag-lev high-speed train. I knew I could never keep straight all the information flowing back and forth from Barista-to-Barista. Never. (Heck, I got fired from my last waiting job in 1986 because I couldn't keep straight the 5 different kinds of potato skins the Dallas restaurant I was working at served.)
It was something to behold.
Fast-forward to a week ago today. I was showing a home in Rancho Bel Air and was meeting my client at that Starbucks so we could get through the guard gate together in one car, rather than have to time our arrival precisely and deal with the guard in separate cars.
I was uncharacteristically early, so I went in and ordered a short (tall) cup of coffee.
I don't know if it's universal at all Starbucks now in 2007, but the frenzied pace was no longer there at that particular location. That crazy mile-a-second cross-talk was nowhere to be heard.
There was also a dramatic absence of activity on the part of the Barista. Gone was the flurry of activity of a person working with the urgency of a bomb squad detonation team. It was replaced by the same general lack of enthusiasm you get when you ask a teenager to...well, to do anything (take out the trash, pick up the clothes on the floor, quit slouching and act like you actually love your family).
The magic, sadly, was gone. But the coffee was still good.
French Lessons
The French have an expression après la gala which translates as “after the party” and refers to that vague sense of sadness that follows a really good time. Like, for example, after you come back from a wonderful vacation and have to face the real world again. The greater the fun was, the more acute the sadness is when it’s over.
I was thinking about that phrase this week when ruminating over the current Las Vegas housing market. These days are definitely “after the party” of 2004-2005. Back then, home builders, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, title companies, appraisers and home inspectors were all hosting this party. The general public, especially home owners, were the guests.
It was like a consequence-free free-for-all. Sellers were getting record prices. Homeowners were becoming multiple homeowners. It was la belle époque for everyone related to the business of home sales.
So it’s not surprising that we all should be feeling a little blue now that that party is over. We’re seeing the real estate equivalent of a sea of empty bottles and full ashtrays scattered across the living room.
But it isn’t the end of the world. It’s just the end of that particular party. We’ll clean up the mess (and what a whopper of a shindig we’re cleaning up after!) and we’ll get back to the real world. And, too, we’ll be having another party before long.
Maybe not the lampshade-wearin’, stereo-blastin’, cop-callin’ party we had before, but good times, nonetheless.
I was thinking about that phrase this week when ruminating over the current Las Vegas housing market. These days are definitely “after the party” of 2004-2005. Back then, home builders, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, title companies, appraisers and home inspectors were all hosting this party. The general public, especially home owners, were the guests.
It was like a consequence-free free-for-all. Sellers were getting record prices. Homeowners were becoming multiple homeowners. It was la belle époque for everyone related to the business of home sales.
So it’s not surprising that we all should be feeling a little blue now that that party is over. We’re seeing the real estate equivalent of a sea of empty bottles and full ashtrays scattered across the living room.
But it isn’t the end of the world. It’s just the end of that particular party. We’ll clean up the mess (and what a whopper of a shindig we’re cleaning up after!) and we’ll get back to the real world. And, too, we’ll be having another party before long.
Maybe not the lampshade-wearin’, stereo-blastin’, cop-callin’ party we had before, but good times, nonetheless.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
My 10 Favorite Things About Las Vegas
In no particular order whatsoever…
Weather
Except for a few weeks in the summer this is just a great, great place to live. And it’s more than just nice temperatures and low humidity. It’s the blue skies. I lived one summer in the Midwest. It was a fun place to be. Festivals every month. Get-togethers every week. Wonderful people who embraced me from Day One. But the skies were gray-ish for all but about 3 days the entire time. Gotta be blue. Gotta be.
People Visit You
The majority of people over 30 in this town are from somewhere else. And one of the fun things about living here is that you always get visits from friends and relatives all over the country. They may not actually stay with you (better, if they don’t, really), but they will be here sooner or later. So it’s a way to keep up with everyone without having to go to the expense of flying/driving to see them.
Restaurants
For those of us who’ve been around for 20 years or more, we can tell you that it wasn’t always this way. Back in the day, the best restaurants were the steak houses in the casinos. There was (still is) Andre’s and Pamplemousse, but not a lot of imagination outside of that. Now we have world class dining. And you don’t have to go to a Strip hotel to get it. Once those standards were raised, it elevated the whole town. Rosemary’s, locally owned/operated is probably the best in town. Both of the two Nora’s are great. Marché Bacchus. Todd’s. Hannah’s. There are fantastic sushi bars everywhere. We’re a big town now. In my opinion, we’ve gotten into the same category of New Orleans, San Francisco and New York where you can just dumb-luck stumble your way into fantastic out-of-the-way restaurants that aren’t even on the map.
Pacific Time & Football Season
We don’t have to wait around for the games to start, and we don’t have to stay up late for night games to end. How great is it to roll out of bed, head to the neighborhood parlor, throw some bets down and be back at the house for breakfast and kick-off! Giddy-up!
Red Rock Canyon
What can you even say about this place? We’re so lucky to have something this beautiful, this close. Even if you don’t take advantage of the trails and the climbing, this is a wonderful “backyard” to show off to visitors without ever leaving your car.
Mt. Charleston
Same story as Red Rock Canyon. It’s a little farther away, but it’s also a half-dozen ecosystems away! There may be other places with a shorter distance from desert floor to alpine woods, a greater climate shift in just 45 minutes distance, but I don’t know of them. What a great psychological adjustment, too! Someone needs to write a song about the place.
McCarran Airport
We’re lucky to have an airport right in town, especially when we’re running late. It’s easy to get to and easy to get around in (post 9-11 security notwithstanding). Plus, there are always a lot of flights in and out.
Opportunity
When I moved to Las Vegas in 1984, the first thing I noticed was the liquid economy. Back in the post-oil bust economy of the early 80s Oklahoma, nobody was making any money and nobody was spending any money. Here, though, money just found its way into my hands. I couldn’t hold on to it very long, but at least I got to play with it for the brief time it was in my hands. It’s still that way. And opportunity is still around. Maybe more opportunity than anywhere else in the country, since the attitude in business and everything else here is, “Hey, let’s do it.” It’s the contrapositive of that line from New York, New York. “If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere.”
Casinos
I hardly ever go. And if I do, it’s to eat or see a movie. But it’s still fun to have them, even if it’s just to gamble once or twice a year. I take that back. Now that I think about it, I do gamble more than once or twice a year, but at the sports books. For some reason, that seems a little different than “gambling”. Even so, it’s only during football season and the Kentucky Derby/Preakness/Belmont Stakes that I even get to the sports books. Even if you don’t gamble, the money generated by gambling allows the casinos to provide other fun things like the Cirque shows, concerts and other headline events.
Family
Okay, this isn’t something that everyone can relate to, but it’s my list, after all. I’ve got an incredible family of in-laws here in Las Vegas. Aunts, uncles and cousins by the dozens all make this just a wonderful, wonderful place to live. Whether it’s my father-in-laws gourmet meals or the whole giant lot of us getting together for a day of Family Olympics (I won the overall Bronze, by the way), there’s always something great going on.
Weather
Except for a few weeks in the summer this is just a great, great place to live. And it’s more than just nice temperatures and low humidity. It’s the blue skies. I lived one summer in the Midwest. It was a fun place to be. Festivals every month. Get-togethers every week. Wonderful people who embraced me from Day One. But the skies were gray-ish for all but about 3 days the entire time. Gotta be blue. Gotta be.
People Visit You
The majority of people over 30 in this town are from somewhere else. And one of the fun things about living here is that you always get visits from friends and relatives all over the country. They may not actually stay with you (better, if they don’t, really), but they will be here sooner or later. So it’s a way to keep up with everyone without having to go to the expense of flying/driving to see them.
Restaurants
For those of us who’ve been around for 20 years or more, we can tell you that it wasn’t always this way. Back in the day, the best restaurants were the steak houses in the casinos. There was (still is) Andre’s and Pamplemousse, but not a lot of imagination outside of that. Now we have world class dining. And you don’t have to go to a Strip hotel to get it. Once those standards were raised, it elevated the whole town. Rosemary’s, locally owned/operated is probably the best in town. Both of the two Nora’s are great. Marché Bacchus. Todd’s. Hannah’s. There are fantastic sushi bars everywhere. We’re a big town now. In my opinion, we’ve gotten into the same category of New Orleans, San Francisco and New York where you can just dumb-luck stumble your way into fantastic out-of-the-way restaurants that aren’t even on the map.
Pacific Time & Football Season
We don’t have to wait around for the games to start, and we don’t have to stay up late for night games to end. How great is it to roll out of bed, head to the neighborhood parlor, throw some bets down and be back at the house for breakfast and kick-off! Giddy-up!
Red Rock Canyon
What can you even say about this place? We’re so lucky to have something this beautiful, this close. Even if you don’t take advantage of the trails and the climbing, this is a wonderful “backyard” to show off to visitors without ever leaving your car.
Mt. Charleston
Same story as Red Rock Canyon. It’s a little farther away, but it’s also a half-dozen ecosystems away! There may be other places with a shorter distance from desert floor to alpine woods, a greater climate shift in just 45 minutes distance, but I don’t know of them. What a great psychological adjustment, too! Someone needs to write a song about the place.
McCarran Airport
We’re lucky to have an airport right in town, especially when we’re running late. It’s easy to get to and easy to get around in (post 9-11 security notwithstanding). Plus, there are always a lot of flights in and out.
Opportunity
When I moved to Las Vegas in 1984, the first thing I noticed was the liquid economy. Back in the post-oil bust economy of the early 80s Oklahoma, nobody was making any money and nobody was spending any money. Here, though, money just found its way into my hands. I couldn’t hold on to it very long, but at least I got to play with it for the brief time it was in my hands. It’s still that way. And opportunity is still around. Maybe more opportunity than anywhere else in the country, since the attitude in business and everything else here is, “Hey, let’s do it.” It’s the contrapositive of that line from New York, New York. “If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere.”
Casinos
I hardly ever go. And if I do, it’s to eat or see a movie. But it’s still fun to have them, even if it’s just to gamble once or twice a year. I take that back. Now that I think about it, I do gamble more than once or twice a year, but at the sports books. For some reason, that seems a little different than “gambling”. Even so, it’s only during football season and the Kentucky Derby/Preakness/Belmont Stakes that I even get to the sports books. Even if you don’t gamble, the money generated by gambling allows the casinos to provide other fun things like the Cirque shows, concerts and other headline events.
Family
Okay, this isn’t something that everyone can relate to, but it’s my list, after all. I’ve got an incredible family of in-laws here in Las Vegas. Aunts, uncles and cousins by the dozens all make this just a wonderful, wonderful place to live. Whether it’s my father-in-laws gourmet meals or the whole giant lot of us getting together for a day of Family Olympics (I won the overall Bronze, by the way), there’s always something great going on.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Musings on the Housing Market
"Bad news on the doorstep. I couldn't take one more step."
Good lord, am I getting sidetracked here!
Okay, you get the picture. Too many homes. Okay, fair enough, but with Las Vegas being the demographic monster that it is and has been for a decade, that inventory would get absorbed soon enough, right?
Well, that's where the second issue rears its head. Loans were free and easy back then. If you could fog a mirror, it seemed, you could get a loan. Wall Street had started getting into the mortgage business as an investment stream and money was flowing. Interest rates were at a 40-year low, there was plenty of it, and guidelines had softened to [in retrospect] irresponsible levels.
Without getting too deep into the mind-numbing machinations of macro-economics and finance (which, I must confess, I daydreamed through in college), those huge reserves have dried up. These were, after all, investments for these fund managers. The investments turned out to be not so good (homeowners in droves stopped paying their mortgages), so they have started putting their money elsewhere.
The bottom line of all that is that there is less money to be loaned and far fewer entry points into mortgages. The answers to the questions in those bullet points a few paragraphs ago are now, "Too bad!", "Tough luck!", "Can't help you, bub." and "Looks like you'll be renting a bit longer."
And if this new-found frugality in the lending business isn't bad enough, the piper has come a-calling on the lenders lately. There's a web site (I've forgotten the name of it) which lists all the mortgage companies who are going out of business. Each time another one bites the dust, it goes up on that site.
That's the "bad news on the doorstep" part of this scene.
But the "couldn't take one more step" part is what's really got me going today. Buyers who can and do qualify to purchase homes now are so paralyzed with fear about "what next" that they're reticent to move. At a time when inventory is at an all-time high and buyers wield the most power they've every had in this market, some are still taking a wait-and-see position. The market's a funny thing.
It goes back to Monday's posting. The real estate market in Las Vegas will be back as strong as train smoke. No one is going to get hurt buying in this market right now.
Can I get an amen?
-Don McLean, American Pie
There is a sort of self-fulfilling doom aspect to what's happening in Las Vegas real estate these days. The facts are these:
- There is unprecedented inventory (bad for sellers of average, nondescript homes, bad for real estate agents with average, nondescript listings; okay, but laborious for buyers and their agents).
- There are fewer buyers able to get loans now than there were last week, and far more than there were last month.
The first of these is a cyclical development, a natural cause-effect condition resulting from the Las Vegas housing boom of 2004-2005 (my data says it began in the summer of 2003, but we'll go with the commonly accepted dates here). For about 30 months, everyone and their uncle were buying houses, condos, land, whatever they could get their hands on with the idea of flipping them and making $30,000-$80,000 in six months. And for about 6 of those months that was true. Over 50% of the homes being purchased in Las Vegas and Henderson were second homes (even if they weren't listed that way with the lenders, which we'll get to in a second).
Somewhere in early 2006 (again, my research shows it was more like mid-2005) we all collectively woke up and saw that the emperor was in his skivvies. We all bought into that craze of activities and finally realized that it wasn't what it appeared. "The Frenzy" was over and we were faced with the task of having such a surplus of homes on the market that not even the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country could keep up with.
Of course we should have known that there was something fishy about all that. Just like we all should have known that there was something fishy about 1998 when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were both breaking a home run record that had stood for 36 years. But, hey, when you're all caught up in something exciting, you don't always see the pitfalls of it. Kind of like dating transitioning into marriage.
Somewhere in early 2006 (again, my research shows it was more like mid-2005) we all collectively woke up and saw that the emperor was in his skivvies. We all bought into that craze of activities and finally realized that it wasn't what it appeared. "The Frenzy" was over and we were faced with the task of having such a surplus of homes on the market that not even the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country could keep up with.
Of course we should have known that there was something fishy about all that. Just like we all should have known that there was something fishy about 1998 when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were both breaking a home run record that had stood for 36 years. But, hey, when you're all caught up in something exciting, you don't always see the pitfalls of it. Kind of like dating transitioning into marriage.
Good lord, am I getting sidetracked here!
Okay, you get the picture. Too many homes. Okay, fair enough, but with Las Vegas being the demographic monster that it is and has been for a decade, that inventory would get absorbed soon enough, right?
Well, that's where the second issue rears its head. Loans were free and easy back then. If you could fog a mirror, it seemed, you could get a loan. Wall Street had started getting into the mortgage business as an investment stream and money was flowing. Interest rates were at a 40-year low, there was plenty of it, and guidelines had softened to [in retrospect] irresponsible levels.
- No documentation of income? No problem. We'll just put you into this loan.
- Don't want mortgage insurance? We don't blame you! Here's a way to avoid it.
- Bad credit scores? Hey, we were young once, too. Here's a loan for you.
- Can't afford this payment? Well, let's get you into a comfortable adjustable.
In short, too many questionable loans were being made to too many questionable people. And, predictably, within 3 years, a lot of those loans were being foreclosed on. As foreclosures and short sales began creeping up, even more homes came onto the market.
Without getting too deep into the mind-numbing machinations of macro-economics and finance (which, I must confess, I daydreamed through in college), those huge reserves have dried up. These were, after all, investments for these fund managers. The investments turned out to be not so good (homeowners in droves stopped paying their mortgages), so they have started putting their money elsewhere.
The bottom line of all that is that there is less money to be loaned and far fewer entry points into mortgages. The answers to the questions in those bullet points a few paragraphs ago are now, "Too bad!", "Tough luck!", "Can't help you, bub." and "Looks like you'll be renting a bit longer."
And if this new-found frugality in the lending business isn't bad enough, the piper has come a-calling on the lenders lately. There's a web site (I've forgotten the name of it) which lists all the mortgage companies who are going out of business. Each time another one bites the dust, it goes up on that site.
That's the "bad news on the doorstep" part of this scene.
But the "couldn't take one more step" part is what's really got me going today. Buyers who can and do qualify to purchase homes now are so paralyzed with fear about "what next" that they're reticent to move. At a time when inventory is at an all-time high and buyers wield the most power they've every had in this market, some are still taking a wait-and-see position. The market's a funny thing.
It goes back to Monday's posting. The real estate market in Las Vegas will be back as strong as train smoke. No one is going to get hurt buying in this market right now.
Can I get an amen?
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Red Rock and Red Rock
My family and I live somewhere between Red Rock Canyon and Red Rock Casino. Years ago, when I lived in the middle of town, down in Westleigh, I used to drive up Charleston to Red Rock Canyon for hiking about twice a month. I remember one day seeing a sign way, way out on Charleston saying something about "Future" this and "Summerlin" that.
I was outraged that they were encroaching on the Red Rock Canyon area. (Outrage came much easier to me when I was younger.) Summerlin sounded disgustingly "yuppie" (never mind that I was, in every sense of the word, a yuppie myself).
Next, I imagined, there would be a McDonald's sitting on the Lost Creek trailhead. And had I known what a Starbucks was back then, I'd've fretted about one of those smack dab in the middle of Calico Tanks.
Fast-forward 5 or so years and a wife, a daughter later, a real estate career and a home in The Pueblo at Summerlin later...
The first day--I mean the minute they started releasing lots in The Vistas at Summerlin (practically on the very spot where I'd seen the offensive sign years earlier), I was the second guy in line to get one of them. I was one of those godless yuppies who were going to buy a home right in the back yard of Red Rock.
Age and upward mobility will do that to a guy.
But the funny thing is that we hardly even get to Red Rock now that we're just 5 minutes away. (I'll blame a lot of that on having a 4-year old girl who's too girlie to be bothered by hiking, and and a 2-year old boy who's too Neanderthal to stay on a trail or to heed simple commands like "Stop, that's a cactus!" or "Don't eat that burro poop!"
As rarely as we get to Red Rock Canyon these days, we find ourselves at the Red Rock Casino more and more. Ironically, a casino is more family friendly (at least friendlier to our family) than nature itself.
Friday night, for instance. We went to the theaters in Red Rock to see Hairspray. About 30 minutes into the movie, Baxter decided he wasn't about to sit still any longer (even though we had the best seats in the house: the first row of the back section with plenty of leg room to roam and a guard rail in front of us).
Holly & Sadie Belle stayed to watch the movie, I took the boy out and wandered the hallways.
Being all boy (that part of his soul which isn't the aforementioned Neanderthal), Baxter discovered quickly that there were slight ramps in the long hallway that fed each theater. In a boy-second, he conceived a game whereby he would run down the ramp at full speed, screaming and waiving his arms until he got to the bottom where I was kneeling. I was his crash barrier. I'd puff out my chest (make that belly) and he'd do the same in preparation for impact. In each case, I was more an immovable object than his resisitable force could cope with. He'd explode backwards onto his fanny, let out an animal-like grunt, laugh himself silly (or "thilly" as he pronounces the word) and get back up for another run down the ramp again.
I think we boys had as much fun out of the theater as the girls did inside it.
The Fertittas couldn't possibly have forseen that kind of absurd father-son slapstick when they designed the theater foyers in Red Rock Casino. But it works.
And it's kind of funny, now that I think about it. I was outraged that Stations was building a casino so close to Red Rock Canyon, too. Now I have embraced both Summerlin and the Red Rock Casino.
I must be getting old.
I was outraged that they were encroaching on the Red Rock Canyon area. (Outrage came much easier to me when I was younger.) Summerlin sounded disgustingly "yuppie" (never mind that I was, in every sense of the word, a yuppie myself).
Next, I imagined, there would be a McDonald's sitting on the Lost Creek trailhead. And had I known what a Starbucks was back then, I'd've fretted about one of those smack dab in the middle of Calico Tanks.
Fast-forward 5 or so years and a wife, a daughter later, a real estate career and a home in The Pueblo at Summerlin later...
The first day--I mean the minute they started releasing lots in The Vistas at Summerlin (practically on the very spot where I'd seen the offensive sign years earlier), I was the second guy in line to get one of them. I was one of those godless yuppies who were going to buy a home right in the back yard of Red Rock.
Age and upward mobility will do that to a guy.
But the funny thing is that we hardly even get to Red Rock now that we're just 5 minutes away. (I'll blame a lot of that on having a 4-year old girl who's too girlie to be bothered by hiking, and and a 2-year old boy who's too Neanderthal to stay on a trail or to heed simple commands like "Stop, that's a cactus!" or "Don't eat that burro poop!"
As rarely as we get to Red Rock Canyon these days, we find ourselves at the Red Rock Casino more and more. Ironically, a casino is more family friendly (at least friendlier to our family) than nature itself.
Friday night, for instance. We went to the theaters in Red Rock to see Hairspray. About 30 minutes into the movie, Baxter decided he wasn't about to sit still any longer (even though we had the best seats in the house: the first row of the back section with plenty of leg room to roam and a guard rail in front of us).
Holly & Sadie Belle stayed to watch the movie, I took the boy out and wandered the hallways.
Being all boy (that part of his soul which isn't the aforementioned Neanderthal), Baxter discovered quickly that there were slight ramps in the long hallway that fed each theater. In a boy-second, he conceived a game whereby he would run down the ramp at full speed, screaming and waiving his arms until he got to the bottom where I was kneeling. I was his crash barrier. I'd puff out my chest (make that belly) and he'd do the same in preparation for impact. In each case, I was more an immovable object than his resisitable force could cope with. He'd explode backwards onto his fanny, let out an animal-like grunt, laugh himself silly (or "thilly" as he pronounces the word) and get back up for another run down the ramp again.
I think we boys had as much fun out of the theater as the girls did inside it.
The Fertittas couldn't possibly have forseen that kind of absurd father-son slapstick when they designed the theater foyers in Red Rock Casino. But it works.
And it's kind of funny, now that I think about it. I was outraged that Stations was building a casino so close to Red Rock Canyon, too. Now I have embraced both Summerlin and the Red Rock Casino.
I must be getting old.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Is it as bad as all that?
I just got off the phone with an old friend, a local real estate agent. He's gone back to the job he had before getting his license.
It's beginning to be a familiar story. People are leaving the business as fast as they got into the business between 2004-2005. The reason is obvious.
Unless you don't own a television, never see a newspaper, or are out of contact with every other living person you know, you're aware that the housing market in the US (and especially here in the Las Vegas area) is very down. Depending on who you listen to, the outlook ranges from "apocalyptic" at worst to "couldn't suck any worse" at best.
Those of you who know me know that I'm not the optimistic type by nature. Far from it. But not pessimistic, either. More like cautious. Skeptical, but not cynical. I don't look at a glass and say, "It's half-empty." I'm more likely to look at it and say, "Whatever is in that glass, I'm not sure you want to drink it."
So when something bright and sparkly comes out of my mouth, it's been thought through and vetted pretty thoroughly. And I have to go on record on the subject of the Las Vegas real estate market as saying, "Hey, it's rough right now, but it's coming back, and coming back in a big way."
With the staggering commercial development that is on the books (MGM Mirage's CityCenter, Boyd's Eschelon Las Vegas and REI Neon's upcoming Project Pulse--which is bigger than either of the first two) it's undeniable that we are going to grow enormously within 3-5 years. More growth in both population and capital than we've ever seen.
The current housing glut and the current lending crisis will--grim as they are at the moment--be faintly remembered by the end of this decade.
About this stuff, I'm not only saying there's plenty of water in that glass, but it's going to taste pretty good, too.
It's beginning to be a familiar story. People are leaving the business as fast as they got into the business between 2004-2005. The reason is obvious.
Unless you don't own a television, never see a newspaper, or are out of contact with every other living person you know, you're aware that the housing market in the US (and especially here in the Las Vegas area) is very down. Depending on who you listen to, the outlook ranges from "apocalyptic" at worst to "couldn't suck any worse" at best.
Those of you who know me know that I'm not the optimistic type by nature. Far from it. But not pessimistic, either. More like cautious. Skeptical, but not cynical. I don't look at a glass and say, "It's half-empty." I'm more likely to look at it and say, "Whatever is in that glass, I'm not sure you want to drink it."
So when something bright and sparkly comes out of my mouth, it's been thought through and vetted pretty thoroughly. And I have to go on record on the subject of the Las Vegas real estate market as saying, "Hey, it's rough right now, but it's coming back, and coming back in a big way."
With the staggering commercial development that is on the books (MGM Mirage's CityCenter, Boyd's Eschelon Las Vegas and REI Neon's upcoming Project Pulse--which is bigger than either of the first two) it's undeniable that we are going to grow enormously within 3-5 years. More growth in both population and capital than we've ever seen.
The current housing glut and the current lending crisis will--grim as they are at the moment--be faintly remembered by the end of this decade.
About this stuff, I'm not only saying there's plenty of water in that glass, but it's going to taste pretty good, too.
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