On June 20, 1955, citing the opening of three hotels at a cost of $15 million, the Life magazine had a headline saying,” the signs of good times seemed everywhere”. Fifty years later there seems to be an echo of that headline again as demand for affordable housing is going through the roof. This demand is being met by apartment conversions.

Of the 17,105 house closing 2,272 were apartment conversions. Apartment conversion had a median of about $150, 000, while the median price of a new home for six month period was $289,065.

A lot of condo conversions are coming up; as a result the median has come down, which means affordable housing. Converted condos, which were selling for $137,000 to $160,000 are now selling at $200,000. It is predicted that median new home price will jump 20 percent by next year, while the existing prices will rise 15 percent to 20 percent.

Builders have learned to control supply by controlling investors. Only one third of the new homes were sold to the investors last year, which has further dropped to 14 percent this year. With market price soaring high the median of new home in Las Vegas may hit $1million.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 at 12:12 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.