Las Vegas, Seattle spark housing surge
National home price index jumps 6 percent
WASHINGTON — Double-digit annualized home prices gains in Seattle and Las Vegas led broad gains in U.S. home prices in a widely watched report released early Tuesday.
Strong demand from would-be
buyers and a shrinking supply of properties for sale helped fuel the increase.
Standard & Poor’s said Tuesday that its S&P Corelogic Case-shiller national home price index stood in October a solid 6 percent above its previous 2006 peak.
The strongest annual gains occurred in Seattle, where prices have shot up 12.7 percent since October 2015. Las Vegas has seen prices increase 10.2 percent, while San Diego notched growth of 8.1 percent. Of the 20 metro areas tracked by the index, Washington, D.C., reported the smallest price gain with 3.1 percent.
Prices are rising at more than double the pace of wage growth, cre
HOMES
want to be vibrant and want supported. That takes purses and pocketbooks and wallets and heads in beds, and those are things they have a renewed focus on. Fremont9 is one small down payment on a greater vision they have. I think their vision is amazing. They’ve kind of got adult supervision over there now, and it’s a more serious business model.
When people drive around and explore the Fremont Street area, what do investors think if they’re looking to do a deal downtown?
Savvy investors understand evolution, and if they’ve been studying the area for a while, they’ve seen a major difference with Downtown Project cleaning up the neighborhood. I think pioneer-type investors are looking for opportunities, which sets thetablefordowntownprojectto probably sell sites that are not strategic. People would buy those. But for retail and institutional investors, it’s still too early. They have no interest in that area, and they won’t have interest in that area for a while.
One of the things that people always talk about that’s missing downtown is a supermarket. Do you think a Smith’s or an Albertsons would look to go downtown?
If you gave them the building and builtitforthemandgaveittothem for free rent, they wouldn’t come. They’d say, “OK, let’s see what the one- and three- and five-mile radius purchasing-power economic-study says,” and it’s going to come up zero. You’ve got this hole at Symphony Park, the Moulin Rouge, the undeveloped lots. There are a lot of casino properties that don’t have residents and neighborhoods like the Scotch 80s that do have purchasing power. You’re going to need thousands of rooftops before you make a difference for a grocery store to be viable there. Do you see Tony Hsieh saying, “We’ll give you a whole city block”? No. That’s why it’s years and years and years away.
But you think there could be more multifamily development downtown?
Oh,mygod,alotmore.thedemand is there for it. You have a lot of millennials today, they don’t want tobuyahome.theywanttorent. They’ve seen the economic devastation their parents and older siblings have been through. There was a lot of angst because there was a lack of mobility in employment markets. If you lost your job in Vegas and wanted to move for work, you had this anchor around your leg called a house and a mortgage, and you’re underwater.
Today there’s more demand for rental product than ever, but Vegas has all these garden-style apartments, and there’s a good number of my friends who would just as soon choke themselves than live in one of our apartments. Not because of the quality, but because they want an urban, edgier existence, not some sanitized, suburban existence in Green Valley or Summerlin.
Downtown has the second-highest concentration of jobs in Nevada, the first being the Strip. A lot of people workhere.there’salotofpeople who would like to get off the halfhour commute and walk or ride a bicycle to work. It’s a real lifestyle change, and if you’re already committed to leasing versus owning, this is the perfect, logical place to do it.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.