Yahoo and the Human Capital Institute asked “Imagine you were offered a dream job that required you to relocate to your favorite city. Which city would it be? And why?” Scroll down to see how Vegas fared:

Affordability, which was No. 4 in last year’s list, is now the second-most important attribute workers consider before relocating, thanks to the economic downturn. Affordability might have something to do with the fact that Las Vegas, where home prices have fallen faster than in most cities, climbed to fourth place on this year’s list of America’s favorite cities.

Thinking of a Real Estate Investment?  Then you’ll want to read this piece on Questions to Ask Property Managers before you sign any management agreements!  For that matter, some of these questions are things potential renters might want to know!

The Next Wave:  You’ve heard about several major retailers declaring bankruptcy.  You’ve probably noticed a bunch of little retailers closing their doors too.  But what effect will this have on the real estate market? Well, it won’t be good:

The number of late payments and defaults [by business owners on their leases] will double, if not triple, by the end of next year, according to analysts at Fitch Ratings, which evaluates companies’ credit. “We’re probably in the first inning of the commercial mortgage problem,” said Scott Tross, a real estate lawyer at Herrick Feinstein in New Jersey.

That’s bad news for more than just property owners. When businesses go dark, employees lose jobs. Towns lose tax revenue. School budgets and social services feel the pinch.

Will this turn into disaster?  Or an unexpected opportunity for people who thought they couldn’t afford a lease to open their dream business?  Only time will tell.

And one last thing:  In this season we remember those who don’t have what we have.  When you plan your charitable giving, please remember Child’s Play, a charity that gets toys and games into the hands of children in hospitals. 

Not that I agree with their list, but you might want to check out Lifehacker’s Top 10 Real Estate Links. By way of disclaimer, I do not recommend using Zillow as a serious price comparison tool. First and foremost, it treats foreclosure auctions as equal to sales.  If you see a house that “sold” for 30% less than everything else in the neighborhood 3 months ago, that’s not a sale.  That’s what was owed when the bank took it back!

Tips on real estate listings and fliers are really aimed more at Realtors, but I think Joe and Jane Average can learn from these tips too.

Echelon is paused but not cancelled. Not a problem.  It just pushes some of our growth a little into the future.  Truth be told, that’s probably a good thing in the long run.

As far as economic trends in Vegas, I am reduced to “What He Said!“  We still have jobs being created in Vegas, home sales are up in Vegas, and thousands of new residents still arrive each month.

The Fed Funds Rate is down and mortgage rates are up.  If you are confused about how that works, let me give you the ultra short version:  the Fed does not and cannot control the prime rate or mortgage rates.  Period. What the Fed does control is the interest rate banks charge one another, and the rates banks get when they borrow money directly from the Federal Reserve. To learn more about the Fed, please check out their educational site.

Half of all homeowners are still in denial and think the market value of their home has not gone down. I’m sorry to tell them this, but no matter how nice any particular house is, no matter how fabulous the upgrades, no matter how lovely the renovations, no matter how well the maintenance, housing values are down.

Tomorrow is Nevada Day.  Schools, state offices, and many other things will be closed.  It is, however, your last chance for early voting.  Have a great Nevada Day and a safe Halloween!

A developer is close to an agreement with both the City of North Las Vegas and the National Guard to build a hotel-casino next to the National Guard’s training area. The facility would have 1000 rooms in two 8-story towers.

Historically, a Vegas hotel-casino creates about 2 jobs per room within the facility itself, and a total of 5-7 jobs when including those created in the community.  That would include all the accountants, grocery store clerks, teachers, and other workers who will provide goods and services to the people working in and staying at the hotel itself.

In addition, this is frankly an area of town that could use some business development. North Las Vegas property values have traditionally lagged values in Las Vegas proper.

Yesterday, the International Times Herald ran a Bloomberg article called Defaults in Las Vegas turn investment banks into decorators. I can only imagine the number of signatures that have to be gathered to actually change a paint color! Here’s an excerpt:

Since January, when Ian Bruce Eichner, a New York developer, defaulted on a $760 million loan, Deutsche Bank has been giving Perini a monthly check for $70 million to continue construction. It is now in full swing with 2,800 workers on site and a dozen cranes towering overhead.

Deutsche Bank, which declined to comment about the Cosmopolitan, is one of a dozen investment banks that rode a five-year boom in commercial real estate by financing developers and landlords while profiting by packaging loans into securities. But credit markets seized up in 2007, sticking banks and brokerage firms with commercial mortgages and bonds. The amount for large U.S. banks alone reached $169 billion, according to Fitch Ratings.

The Cosmopolitan is clearly worth more to Deutsche Bank as a finished product than a construction site. It’s still scheduled to open in late 2009.

But the Cosmopolitan has other problems too: Cosmopolitan Magazine is suing them over their name! Hearst Publications insists “the Cosmopolitan development has tried to confuse the public into thinking the project is associated with the publishing company.” Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t see how I can confuse the two. Here’s what the Cosmopolitan will look like. Now, here’s what Cosmopolitan Magazine looks like.

Next thing you know, they’ll be forcing bars everywhere to pay a royalty every time they serve a Cosmo.

Most people have never heard of Ivanpah. No, not the “ghost town“. The proposed solar power farm? Well, that’s closer.

I am referring to Ivanpah International Airport — currently a hunk of desert near Jean, Nevada — a facility well supported in Nevada and almost unanimously supported by Congress. It is supposed to take some of the passengers that currently fly to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, a facility projected to reach its capacity within a few years. Eventually, Ivanpah is supposed to be able to handle 35 million yearly visitors, compared to McCarran’s projected 53 million visitors.

Of course, it doesn’t take much thought to realize that it is going to take some infrastructure to get those visitors from Ivanpah to Las Vegas proper. Proposals include more roads and high-speed rail. Of course, in my mind even better would be high speed rail from Vegas to Los Angeles, perhaps with a stop at Ivanpah. That would sure take a load off McCarran and LAX too, to say nothing of saving fuel as motorists decide to take the train instead of drive.

While most people don’t have a lot to say on the matter, not everyone is happy. Some people worry about the impact it might have on the nearby Mohave Desert, and argue that even if we need an airport it should go elsewhere. Due to military restrictions, such a facility cannot be built north of town, and terrain restricts many other locations. Others argue that between the problems airlines are having and fuel costs, we don’t really need the facility at all, and certainly not in the middle of the desert.

The real strength of Ivanpah is not as a passenger airport. Fares would have to be ludicrously low to get most people to give up flying into McCarran (5 minutes from the Strip) to land in Jean (a half hour away, according to Google). Ivanpah’s real purpose is as a cargo airport. Some experts estimate that bypassing Los Angeles with international cargo could shave days if not a whole week off shipping times.

Of course I would be remiss if I did not mention the jobs that will be created building and subsequently staffing this airport. Jean is close enough that it is commutable from Henderson and the southern half of Las Vegas, although I would expect more development down the I-15 corridor between the two.

No Crown for Vegas: Back in December, Clark County approved the Crown project, which would have been the second tallest structure on the Strip. This week, “Company officials said the recent upheaval in the world financial market caused the plans to be scrapped.” Furthermore, they will stop making payments towards purchasing the land for the project.

The truth about foreclosures: Just because the bank owns it and wants to not own it anymore doesn’t make it a bargain automatically. Buyers still need to do their research, Realtors still need to be aware of market conditions and advise buyers accordingly, and everyone needs to be aware that it takes patience to deal both with the bank and the problems that may arise.

Didn’t I already say this? Tony’s tips for curb appeal on foreclosure sales may be intended for REO agents (who are experienced listing agents or the bank would never call them) and investors who have purchased property from banks (see above). But they still hold true for Joe and Jane Average as they try to sell their home.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Licensee: I bet there’s at least one Realtor that lives in your neighborhood. Heck, there’s at least 3 on my block! Odds are very good that there’s a Realtor or two that takes a vested interest in your neighborhood, even if she lives miles away. She sends newsletters, she knows every house that’s been available for the last year, she goes door to door, maybe she goes to HOA meetings and organizes neighborhood garage sales. Well, she probably does genuinely like the neighborhood — particularly if she chooses to live there! — but the truth is she would like your business too. It’s a win-win situation, because chances are she knows and can highlight the great things about the neighborhood and the homes in it better than any agent in the area.

Lies, Foreclosures, and Gratuitous References to Adult Parties: The Hopps of Florida weren’t the only people making money off the real estate bubble — in fact, I think you could argue that if their actions involved securities, the SEC would be investigating them for “pump and dump“. In fact, many areas had somebody involved in the same sorts of schemes, where homes were bought for no-money-down, taking mortgages for more than the purchase price, and hoping to get out quickly. The Hopps might have been nothing more than a footnote if it weren’t for that one party making the news. The moral? I don’t know, defraud people and corporations as much as you like, as long as everybody keeps their clothes on?

I normally talk general econ over there, but….: Tim Iocono has some things to point out regarding the relationship of real estate holdings to overall net worth of American households.

I won’t bore you with the various conflicting stories I have seen this week regarding the state of the real estate markets. They range from “things will deteriorate for at least another year or three” to “we should see a bottom in the next 6 months” to “we are bottoming now” to “what are you talking about prices have already started to rise again in some places.” But you know how Tip O’Neill said “all politics is local”? Well all real estate is too. And locally, supply is declining. Sometimes when I do “floor duty” (answering real estate inquiries at the office for people who do not have Realtors), the phone rings regularly with people who want to buy. Econ 101 says that when supply declines and demand remains steady — or rises — prices go up.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Today, tech news community Slashdot brought us a story from the British news site The Register: a company called Switch Communications — which calls itself “The #1 Rated Disaster Avoidance Colocation and Bandwidth Interconnect Facilities in North America” — is building one of the largest data centers in the world. It’s called the SuperNAP. Here’s more coverage from C|Net, Techbays, and Broadband Reports.

If that was “All Geek to you,” collocation is nothing more complicated than putting your computer servers on somebody else’s property. Not only does it ensure that somebody with real tech savvy is there should anything go wrong, but it’s great insurance against natural disasters. Las Vegas doesn’t have a lot of hurricanes (this site is from a guy who rode out Katrina in a collocation center), tornadoes, tsunamis, or things like that. Our flash flooding problem — this fire truck was just minutes from my home and office — has been sharply reduced if not eliminated in all but the most serious of storms by a series of drainage canals under the city (these canals were a critical plot point in at least one episode of CSI). Although Nevada does have some earthquake activity, we have a lot less than California, and most of it is nowhere near Vegas. Knock on wood. NAP is an acronym for Network Access Point; a SuperNAP would be a really, really big Network Access Point!

How big would it be? How about 407,000 square feet with 30 cooling towers and over 7000 server cabinets! Here’s more:

The SuperNAP will cost about $350m, and be about the same size as Google and Microsoft’s $500m data centers. Roy, however, thinks Switch can pack about four times as much computing power in the SuperNAP as these rival centers thanks to the cooling systems and energy supplies.

The irony of putting all this cooling power into a desert area where summer temperatures routinely hit triple digits for weeks on end! Perhaps they will use solar power?

Granted, $350 million is a lot less than the $2.7 billion ($2700 million) it cost to build the Wynn Hotel/Casino, but it will doubtless have a positive impact on our local economy, and put a lot of very smart techie-types to work.

Remember some months back that the Tropicana begged workers to put off actually depositing their paychecks? Having lived through The Great DotCom Boom and subsequent bust, I know that this is a great big, glowing “get out now” red flag for any company’s prospects.

The inevitable has happened:  Tropicana Entertainment LLC is declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  This does not mean they will be closing down — Reuters makes sure to tell us that the casino remains open! They will be renegotiating $2.8 billion in debt, and the Atlantic City casino will be sold by the State of New Jersey. For the ultra-short version, try this “just the facts, ma’am” rundown.  For more links, try our friends over at Vegas Happens Here, and don’t forget his great commentary on the bankruptcy filing itself.

This is part of a huge jump in the number of American corporations filing for bankruptcy.

Good news for Vegas real estate development: the Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino will avoid foreclosure. When finished, the hotel and convention facilities will be run by Hyatt. The complex will include roughly 3000 hotel rooms in addition to a number of luxury, high-rise condominiums.

A couple items on that quintessential Vegas export, weddings! First we have the Vegas Wedding FAQ. Not up for a Vegas wedding? Join some other couples in a much more sedate (but equally quick) Henderson wedding.

Confused about the various mortgage options and qualifications out there? Thanks to Inman News for pointing out Mortgage Grader. Warning: inline sound and video.

And a foreclosure prevention currently under debate would allow bankruptcy judges to modify or “cram down” new terms on some mortgages of owner-occupied homes with “subprime or non-traditional” mortgages. A bunch of stipulations apply, of course, and terms are still under negotiation in Congress. Needless to say, lenders hate this idea, and say it will increase lending costs to consumers. Notable economic minds like Larry Summers advocate some sort of bankruptcy reform needs to be a part of the foreclosure solution.

Looking forward to seeing some of you this Friday, February 29, 2008, at the Desert Shores Dojo!

I am proud to announce that I will be on hand at the United Studios of Self-Defense Desert Shores Dojo for a networking open house on Friday, February 29 from 6-8 PM. The dojo is at 8410 W. Cheyenne, Suite #104, near the intersection of Rampart/Durango and Cheyenne in the Albertsons parking lot.

I will be on hand to answer your questions about the Las Vegas real estate market, real estate in general, local neighborhoods, and of course I will be glad to discuss helping you buy or sell a home. If you have specific issues you want to discuss with me, don’t wait: call me at 702-727-7842 today! If you would like to search listings first, click here!

Other businesses will be on hand to discuss their products and services as well. For more information, a list of businesses that will be there, or to reserve room for your business, be sure to call 702-396-9944 and talk to Miss Teri or Sensei Bryan today!