Las Vegas Homes, Condos, Land and Commercial Real Estate Blog

Meridian, Las Vegas condos for sale, more trouble for Meridian condominiums but I still like them as an investment opportunity

Man-o- man, when the news came out about Meridian Condos on E. Flamingo Road having the entrance to Flamingo Rd. blocked  I was happy and licking my chops. I told all my investors that now I can get these condominiums for them for nothing, and took my Texas investor and his friends to Meridian.  Karen showed them 10 condos, but I only could go to 5 of them, my knees and back were on fire. He asked us to “get him 5″, I told him that I would rather write 5 offers to get one condo unit rather than pay $5,000 too much for them. I would have been happy to get two out of five. Karen prepared 5 offers and faxed it to him and he sent us back the most organized replies I have ever seen (more about him later).

We submitted 5 offers which averaged $4,000 over asking price, no repair money or seller contribution to closing costs, cash offer with two week close. Banks understand these terms. We summarily received two rejections and got another one next day because the bank had accepted another offer the day we submitted the purchase contract. One of these condos broke my heart; it was back on the market for only two days.

Then voila, an almost accepted offer, we actually got a counter offer from the bank. The counter offer was a standard bank counter offer except for this clause and it stated:

“Buyer has been informed of title/HOA issues seller is aware of. Buyer agrees to accept the property with “lis pendens” on title. Buyer agrees to hold the seller harmless for all title/HOA Issues”.

Fair enough, except the seller did not provide the lis pendens (“lis pendens” is a document filed in the public records office that notifies any prospective purchaser of property that there is litigation pending that could affect title to the property).

I called the listing agent and told him the same. He referred me to the title company which was handling the escrow. I called them and asked for either the lis pendens or a preliminary title search before I answered the counter offer.

 Man, I was happy to finally be able to learn about the exceptions to the title insurance, except that the title officer e-mailed within 45 minutes that another agent who had an accepted offer had called her about the same unit and since I lost, I would not get the lis pendens. I called the listing agent back. First they denied that this was the case, but upon further investigation, confirmed it.  I deeply dislike working with this listing agent who gets a ton of foreclosed/reo listings from a bank, but if I think it is in the interest of my clients I will submit an offer to this guy. The reason is that I have no ego in a real estate deal, because it is not my deal, it is my customer’s.

Needless to say I lost this deal over a clause which should be litigated by a real estate attorney in Las Vegas. Lis pendens resulting from HOA troubles should be included in the resale package or CC&RS package, the buyer by law has 5 days from the time he/she gets the package to approve or reject it. This package includes Meridian home owner’s association budget and minutes of the past meeting plus litigation info. To my knowledge no seller can wave providing the resale package to the buyer, the seller can ask the buyer to pay for it, but has to cooperate with the buyer to obtain it. I believe this clause should have never been included in the bank’s counter offer, but it was and I lost because of it. Welcome to the wild, wild world of Las Vegas real estate.

The rush on Meridian condos which is one of the best selling condo communities in Las Vegas happened due to two factors. One is the 10%-15% price cuts that I wrote about in the last blog. These price cuts generated multiple offers because even at $5,000 over asking price, the offer would be $10,000-$20,000 below comps. However these condos will be the new comps when they close escrow. The other reason is the publicity generated by closing one of its entrances; I think that if they close the other entrance to Meridian, it will probably sell out

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