First, an inventory of the existing Las Vegas condo inventory and sold units:
Allure: 427 units; 225 closed.
Boca Raton: 378 completed units (another 378 in planning stages); of those completed, "over 50%" are closed.
Juhl: 2,046 units (six towers with 341 units each); 13 closed.
Loft 5: Unknown — they use an unhelpful answering service instead of humans, it seems.
Panorama Towers: 1,010 units; 666 closed.
One Las Vegas: 359 units; 40 closed.
Turnberry Place: 632 units; unknown how many are closed.
Platinum: 255 units; unclear how many of those are sold.
MGM Signature: 1,728 units; 100% are sold, though a number are up for resale.
Palms Place: 599 units; "over 60%" of the units are closed.
Trump International: 1,282 units; 300 closed.
Streamline Towers: 275 units; 10% closed (according to SalesTraq).
In addition, 90 buyers suddenly found themselves without condos when the Harmon Hotel in CityCenter had to be halved in height, due to rampant construction defects. Those would-be Harmon residents could be dispersed to other CityCenter condos (in the Vdara, Mandarin Oriental or Veer high-rises) or they might take their refunded deposits and wind up at Turnberry or other existing condo towers.
Concerning foreclosures and forfeited deposits, Las Vegas Business Press real estate reporter Tony Illia says that’s "the type of information developers keep secret." Larry Murphy, president of SalesTraq, which keeps tabs on condo closings, told the Las Vegas Sun: "We are seeing a substantial amount of foreclosures for [the second-wave] buyers who paid higher prices. We are seeing foreclosures in the high-rise market just like the rest of the housing market. It is not immune."
Many of those getting burned, Murphy added, were speculators who bought condos in hopes of flipping them at a markup. That’s not happening –- quite the reverse, in fact. Condos at Palms Place, for one, have been going back on the market at a loss. (Up in Reno, condo units on the top floors of the Grand Sierra, formerly the Reno Hilton, which sold for $400,000 when they first came on the market, are reselling for around $70,000.)
In a further blow, BankUnited blacklisted 14 southern Nevada condo towers last February, saying it would no longer write purchase loans for: Sky Las Vegas, Panorama Towers, One Queensridge Place, Allure, the District at Green Valley Ranch, Manhattan Condominiums, Park Avenue Condominiums, Meridian (Hughes Center), Turnberry Place, SoHo Lofts, Newport Lofts, Turnberry Towers, and two others. An increasing number of foreclosures was one of the reasons cited for the loan freeze.
Some condo boosters, however, continue to try and jawbone the market back up, noting that there are "only" 1,306 condos on the Strip. That number will be greatly diluted if the bankrupt Cosmopolitan (1,700 units) and Fontainebleau (1,000 units) towers open as planned and are not converted into hotel rooms outright –- as is happening after the fact at Trump International.
As for those condos, such as Turnberry and Sky, which were holding the line on prices last winter, high-end realtor Bruce Hiatt told the Sun, "They are holding back because they know it is going to be several years before high rises are going to be built again, and they are not going to give them away because of the current market situation. They know once they are gone, they are gone."
And yet, few are being bought.
