The real estate market is like a giant boat:  it has a lot of momentum, it takes a while to get where it’s going, and it takes a lot to get it turned.  In the case of Las Vegas, tugboats are already on the scene, nudging us towards safe harbor. The Review Journal picked up [...]

Last week, there was a fire at the Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino.  Needless to say, everyone is thankful there were no deaths, unlike 1980′s MGM fire.  Check out this impressive picture from the Review-Journal.  Truly, we have a great fire department here in the Valley, and I would like to thank them for a [...]

Farmers Branch, TX, an upper-middle class northern suburb of Dallas, has enacted an ordinance that according to CNN, would ban illegal immigrants from renting or owning housing. Regardless of immigration issues, I think the Farmers Branch ordinance is very possibly in violation of federal law. First, there is the possibility that the typical Apartment Manager [...]

The nice folks at Econbrowser have outlined how mortgage securitization works both in theory and in practice. Fear not; they include handy diagrams. AlterNet has some choice opinions about the Bank of America bailout of Countrywide. Some people are very particular about how you pronounce the name of this state. Did you know that women [...]

Slashfood reports that plans are on the table for a huge, 30 story tall vertical farm right here in Las Vegas.  More: This $200 million project would be able to feed 72,000 people for a year and would grow everything from apples to winter squash. Of course, all of the products would be distributed directly [...]

Not that I like rush hour traffic, but I kind of like driving across the Las Vegas Valley around sunset. The fading light reflects off the mountains in a quite lovely way, leaving interesting patterns of shade behind. And so much the better if there are some clouds that turn orange and pink and lavender [...]

It is true that Vegas housing prices have been dropping. It is also true that this drop has been accelerating over the last 4 months, and is even quite evident at the lower end of the market. As a case in point, here’s the latest Average Joe Median Price Index. One thing that is not [...]

Buying a home can be exciting and scary. It’s easy to overlook little things, and easy to get nervous over the prospect of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that brings me to the Tale of the Secret Mold Cellar: it seems a family purchased a bank-owned home only to discover a secret room [...]

Yes, it’s an obligatory CES post. That’s the Consumer Electronics Show, if you didn’t know. Everyone is here.  Bill Gates is here.  Various manufacturers and other vendors are announcing cool stuff — too much for me to talk about and have you still care.  What a shame this may be one of the last ones [...]

If you’ve ever been to Hoover Dam, you understand that in addition to being a huge water management project, above and beyond creating a massive lake, even more than creating gigawatts of electricity, Hoover Dam is part of a functional federal highway.  Well, sort of.  Highway U.S. 93 is a two-lane road on the Dam [...]