Las Vegas Multifamily Preparing For a Comeback

By Alex Girda, Associate Editor

If Las Vegas real estate was a movie theater, multifamily housing would be written all over its marquee. The city had its solid share of real estate headlines this past week, with a massive real estate auction making its mark on all specialty publications.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal pointed out that it seemed that multifamily housing made a mark on investors, with a series of properties the top deals perfected during the auction. An example of how promising some regarded the properties up for auction was The Fountains at Flamingo, a 524-unit gated community; the value of the final bid was $32.5 million, or more than double the $15 million starting bid.

The auction, centering more precisely on foreclosed Las Vegas commercial properties, dealt with an originally estimated value of $1 billion in real estate, according to a Colliers International broker quoted by LVRJ. A Vegas INC story on the same matter reported the final value of sales recorded during the auction was approximately $341 million. The same article emphasized the fact that 84 percent of the foreclosed commercial properties and bank notes that were up for auction have found new ownership.

A vice president with Volt Real Estate Services said that the amount of activity during the auction was surprising and that it indicates that there is currently a lack of distressed commercial properties on the market. He also said that it is now clear that people are ready to take bigger risks than in the past few years, but they are expecting considerable returns.