Boyd executives mum on possible Strip acquisition plans

Gaming industry analysts asked every question they could Tuesday to get Boyd Gaming Corp. executives to provide some clues as to whether they would pursue any Strip assets.

But Boyd CEO Keith Smith and chief financial officer Josh Hirsberg weren’t budging.

After reporting a satisfying second-quarter earnings report, Smith and Hirsberg deflected merger and acquisition inquiries with replies indicating the company would evaluate any deal based on whether it made sense to the company, whether the asset was on the Strip or not.

Boyd has indicated its desire to return to the Strip. It once owned the historic Stardust before imploding the building and preparing the land for a megaresort to be known as Echelon.

The company sold the land, and

“There were too few homes on the market, and buyers were unable to find houses that fit both their needs and their budgets, so they took a breather.”

The sluggish U.S. price growth stems largely from the most expensive markets, where years of price

growth have undermined affordability. Home prices rose less than 2 percent in Los Angeles, New York, San Diego and San Francisco. Prices in the typically hot market of Seattle fell 1.2 percent from a year ago, a sharp reversal from an annualized gain of 13.6 percent in May 2018.

In Las Vegas, the slowdown has affected resales and new construction. In the homebuilding market, buyers are pulling back from developers’

best-selling product in Southern Nevada – the single-family house — and gravitating toward less-expensive condos and townhomes.

Builders closed 4,245 sales of single-family homes this year through June, down 7.4 percent from the same six-month stretch in 2018, and 684 sales of attached homes, up 17.1 percent, according to Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research.