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

When the news media talks about the slow pace of sale for luxury high rise condominiums for sale in Las Vegas they are discussing sales by the builder and not the high rise condos that re-sold through the Las Vegas real estate auctions or Las Vegas MLS, where you can find many short sale listings.

1: The reason that luxury high rise condominiums are not selling well is the cash flow generated by these residential or condo hotels.  HOA fess for $1.30/ square foot at Mandarin Oriental, about $1/SF in Veer Towers at City Center and Signature at MGM Grand. When you add HOA fees to annual taxes and other fees, it can run from hundreds to thousands of dollars per month and income gained from renting a residential condo or condo hotel may not generate cash flows that some investors are looking for. Unfortunately, this issue has overshadowed the value gained from buying a high rise condominium in Las Vegas as you are buying luxury condos that cannot be built at the selling prices and I don’t see any high rise condo being built in Las Vegas for at least a decade.

2: The other reason is that potential investors in CityCenter or other high rise towers don’t want to buy when future price cuts in their desired condo tower are probable.  We have had 30% price cuts for City Center condominiums, and Trump Las Vegas condominiums on sale are selling for 60%-70% off original prices. What happens if City Center cuts prices further as they have only sold 8% of their inventory?

I am not sure what will happen with CityCenter, however if I wanted to buy a condo there, I would ask for a price guarantee. As for other high rise condo towers, good deals can be found right now, but you have to know what you are doing.