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 this article by Jim Woodard called Buyers can find benefits by making home purchase in current market. His main points are that record inventory means incredible selection, there are no bidding wars (well, personal experience suggests “few”), and interest rates on a 30 year fixed mortgage of under 6%. Sure, these things are true other places as well.

The other item is from Inman News, a great source of news and insight into the real estate market nationwide.  They actually took the time to tell us Second-home buyers flocking to Las Vegas.  They specifically talk about the City Center project, with “18.6 million-square-foot, $7.4 billion hotel, casino, retail and residential complex on 76 prime acres”, hiring “7,000 tradesmen and 350 supervisory personnel”, where “60 percent of all residences, starting at $500,000, have sold in the past 10 months.” Many of these units are being purchased as secondary residences, according to the article.  This says nothing of the jobs that will be created when their “60-story, 4,000-room hotel and casino” opens.  Of course, this is only 10% of the hotel rooms currently scheduled to come online in the Valley over the next few years.

One last local note:   Maybe you don’t have a half million dollars for a high-rise condo vacation home on the strip; but if one looks very carefully at the chart of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, it looks very suspiciously like homes in Vegas can be purchased for near 2004 prices.  Follow the emerald green line. Or money green if you prefer to think of it that way.

Particularly if you are investing with non-US Dollar denominated currencies, you should take advantage of the current market.  Your Canadian Dollars, Yen, Euros, Pounds, Francs, or what-have-you go further now than they have in a very long time.

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 job well done.

The Monte Carlo loses $12.68 every second it is closed.  Clean-up and repairs are underway, and employees will be getting their full wages while the facility is closed. Apparently, there are some code issues at play as well, so it may take a while.

Meanwhile, workers at the Tropicana have apparently been told not to cash their paychecks.

To wrap things up, here’s Interesting Las Vegas Facts to Surprise Your Friends.

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 may apply the rules for checking current and correct citizenship and immigration status unevenly. It is not as simple as checking a drivers license, and may be particularly difficult in Texas, where they have had a large influx of Katrina refugees, whose birth certificates and other documents may no longer exist. Is she required to check the heads of household for legal status, or everyone who will be living on property? Even if she does try to check, will she really collect such information on every resident, or only ones with Hispanic surnames? That’s a discrimination lawsuit just waiting to happen. And who will be checking the legal status of purchasers of property? Realtors, title officers, mortgage officers? To whom will it be reported?

Finally, and most importantly, Federal Fair Housing Law says it is not legal to refuse to sell or rent to someone “based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status or handicap….” Refusing to rent to someone because they are not citizens of the United States is based on “national origin.” So our average Apartment Manager is caught in the middle: she can either follow the local law and face federal fines, or follow federal law and face local fines.

My guess is she should be eyeing jobs in neighboring suburbs.

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 are being disproportionately hit by the subprime crisis?

Don’t forget that the caucuses are tomorrow, Saturday, January 19, 2008! Here are links to help you find the closest location for the Democratic caucus and the Republican caucus.

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 to the casinos and hotels, who will be funding the project in the first place. The farm could potentially make up to $25 million a year, plus $15 million in potential tourist revenue. That means that it would eventually recoup the enormous start-up costs, especially with it’s projected $6 million per year operating costs.

Remember, the Valley’s population recently passed over the 2 million people mark.  Any project that spends $100 million per person who lives in the region — and recoups its investment in about 10 years when accounting for projected operating expenses — is going to put some people to work.  Furthermore, if this goes according to plan, it is almost inevitable that someone will want to build another, even bigger one.  That’s just how we do things in Vegas.

Beat the rush:  make your real estate investment in Vegas now.

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 as the sun dips behind the mountains at the West edge of town. This of course makes lovely contrast with the sea of bright lights as one passes by the Strip and Downtown.

Of course, there are other ways to spend time in Vegas than watching the setting sun. Here’s 15 Ways to have a Blast Without Gambling.

Now, if the sun is setting, it might be time to consider some dinner…. or maybe some other meal, depending on your native time zone. On that note, here’s some CES foodblogging from Down the Avenue’s (and Blodgett Communications’s) Renee Blodgett, and some fine dining tips from LasVegasUSA.org.

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 obvious from this summary is that the drop is on declining volume. In short, even though actual closing prices are dropping, fewer homes are selling. Furthermore, this trend is over a long period, and not just a single month “who wants to move at Christmastime anyway” blip.

Now, if this were a stock chart, this data alone would not make me a buyer yet; a move on small volume is not necessarily to be trusted. However, there was still a huge drop in available listings over the last few months. The decline in total available listings was not due to homes being sold, but rather due to “expired” listings: homes that did not sell eventually were taken off the market because the listing agreement was out of date. Other homes were “withdrawn”: taken off market before the expiration date. Some of these unsold homes may re-appear on the market, but the combined number of “closed,” “withdrawn,” and “expired” listings makes for the sizable volume required to make my inner stock-chartist happy.

When you combine this with current mortgage rates — with good credit, a 30-year fixed rate can be had for well under 6%! — it looks like a a good time to buy in my opinion. Sure, prices may continue to decline for several months. Surely you are planning to own a home or condo for more than 6 months, aren’t you? And will interest rates be this low in several months? Even if Mr. Bernanke decides that rising commodity prices are a bigger risk to the economy than the mortgage mess?

This is a good time to contact me about selecting your Vegas house or condominium.

Follow Up: Another sign stock traders use to determine market direction is sentiment. But sentiment is an inverse indicator: When everyone is “bullish” is actually the time that things are about to change for the worse! The majority of people actually anticipating worse times in the market is actually a sign that things will change for the better. That being said, this rather small, not scientific survey from Tim Iocono suggests that only 3% of his readers expect a nationwide bottom in housing prices this year, and many readers think we won’t see a bottom until 2013. If sentiment is an inverse indicator in the housing market as it tends to be in the stock market, this is very good news indeed.

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 hidden behind a bookcase; the secret room contained a note from a previous owner, and toxic mold. Apparently, the prior owner could not get the mold problem taken care of and let the bank take it back. They left the note to warn the new folks what they were getting into. I’m not sure I would go so far as to recommend everyone get a mold inspection when buying a home, but pay attention when the regular inspection is done, and make sure you look for “surprises” with a critical eye. These things go double on distressed properties that have things like “short sale,” “repo,” “REO,” “foreclosed,” or “bank owned” in the description. Disclosure laws are disclosure laws, but odds are really good that the bankers have no idea what the property even looks like, let alone what things are wrong with it. Sure, maybe you’ll pick up a bargain. On the other hand, maybe you’ll pick up a money pit.

Here’s a great commentary on the importance of doing research before deciding to buy a house — or any other investment! Your housing decision has to be based on your individual financial circumstances, not some blanket statement about the benefits of owning real estate.

I am very picky about what title companies I use for client transactions. Today, Inman News Blog spells out exactly why every real estate agent should be just as picky as I am. Several title companies in California are “consolidating,” and in one case closing the doors forever without bothering to even tell the employees. Closing on a house purchase or sale is stressful enough without worrying about whether your title company will still be there in 30 days!

For the last item of the day, we have restaurant picks from LasVegasUSA.org. It really would have been nice if they had included addresses, but alas you’ll have to Google your dining selection independently.

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 here in Vegas.

Here’s a view of Vegas from one of the attendees,  and some tips offered by a local attendee for surviving CES — a lot of it applies to almost any Vegas event you might attend.

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 as it runs from Arizona to Montana.  Even if the Dam itself were not a massive tourist destination, 2 lanes would hardly be sufficient.  Add to that the potential of the Dam as a terrorist target — truck traffic hasn’t been allowed since 2001 — and it was almost inevitable that someday they would have to build a bridge to add capacity and bypass the Hoover Dam itself.

The bridge is supposed to be finished in 2010, and the crane system needed to make it all happen should be working by the end of the month.

The new pulley-type, “high-line” crane system was designed and specifically built with the bypass project in mind, said Dave Zanetell, a Federal Highway Administration engineer overseeing the project. “The other system was basically brought in from another construction site.”

More than a year ago, two pairs of 280-foot towers that made up the other system collapsed amid 55 mph winds.

The high-line system is needed to carry up to 50 tons of materials and workers about 1,100 feet over the Colorado River via 2,300-foot-long steel cables that stretch between the towers and over the gorge.

Here’s more information about the bridge itself:

The 1,905-foot bridge will include an 890-foot span over the river. It will provide four lanes for the U.S. Highway 93 traffic that currently uses the two-lane road over the dam.

About 17,000 cars and trucks are expected to use the new bridge on a daily basis.

Today more than 2,000 trucks detour the dam via U.S. Highway 95 to a river crossing in Laughlin. Truck traffic was banned from the dam just after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The new structure will be named the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. O’Callaghan was a popular two-term governor of Nevada, and Tillman was a patriotic Arizona Cardinals football star who joined the military after the 2001 attacks and was killed accidentally by his fellow U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Pretty cool stuff.