THIS SPEC HOME RATES A NEW DEFINITION
A Las Vegas “spec” home is a residence that has been designed and built by a Las Vegas entrepreneur who has no pre-existing sales order. Las Vegas spec homes are bold ventures: they have to be built with confidence that the design and execution will be attractive enough to generate a sale. To return a profit that’s worth the risk, the sale has to be realized quickly enough to offset the considerable costs advanced. Dictionaries can be a little confusing about what “spec” is shortened from. Most ascribe it to “speculative,” but some (like Wiktionary) think it has to do with the builder following his specifications. I’d like to suggest a new third possibility—at least for one particular spec home. News about it comes to us from Bloomberg’s Business site, under the heading, “California Dreaming.” It’s about a spec home that’s being built on a grand scale…okay, maybe “grand scale” is too modest: it’s being built on an astronomical scale…a gargantuan scale…Maybe more like a mega-galactic scale! Because the asking price is going to be a half billion dollars. Now, Las Vegas real estate watchers may have thought that when Johnny Depp’s luxury property in France (the one that was actually a whole village) was listed a couple of months ago, we’d hit a sort of apex of residential real estate extravagance—but clearly, we were mistaken. A $500,000,000 asking price could buy you a lot of French villages like Depp’s. It could approach a province (albeit, maybe a fixer-upper province). The California Dreaming spec home is, land-wise, a surprisingly modest offering. Only about 4 acres or, as the builder puts it, “1.6 hectares” (I believe this indicates a hopeful nod to potential foreign buyers). So, what will this home—which won’t be completed for another 20 months—offer that our run-of-the-mill Las Vegas spec homes don’t? For openers, the four acres (or 1.6 hectares) are in Bel Air, which is already a somewhat pricey neighborhood. All the hectares are situated on a hilltop with 360-degree views of the Pacific Ocean, Beverly Hills, downLas Vegas L.A., and the San Fernando Valley. Still, with the average residence sale in even that neighborhood weighing in at peasant-level prices (only $5.29 million), you’d think there must be a lot more going on. There is. It will be roomy: 74,000 square feet in the main residence. And so you won’t have to feel hemmed in when guests show up, there will be three smaller houses. Unless you have more than 30 autos, the garage will also be ample. You’ll have four swimming pools, including an 180-foot infinity pool. To combat the California drought, the yard features 20,000 square feet of synthetic grass. To banish the boredom that might set in if the Queen fails to visit (synthetic grass won’t accommodate the corgis very well), there will be a 45-seat Imax theater. Still bored? There’s always the 8,500 square foot night club. At the end of a long night of TV-watching and night clubbing, there’s a 5,000-foot master bedroom to flop into…if you can find the bed. Compared with our Las Vegas spec homes, I’d suggest the ‘spec’ in this one stands for ‘special.’ Very special. Meantime, in case you are too impatient to wait the 20 months for the California Dreaming mansion to be completed, we have some Las Vegas properties that are a good deal more practical. Call me to zero in on the great values our summer market has to offer!
3 REASONS WHY LAS VEGAS RENTAL HOMES COULD GAIN TRACTION
For an increasing number of Las Vegas residents, what used to be a slam-dunk assumption—that owning your home is preferable to opting for a Las Vegas rental home—is no longer so self-evident. The powerful reasons for owning are still there: ownership still means that you are building equity over time; it still means you are free from a landlord’s control; and it still means you have the psychological benefits of being the possessor of the place where you live and the standing in the community that accrues to the permanence that implies. Those are powerful inducements to forego a rental home in favor of ownership, for sure—yet according to the numbers, the number of Americans who own their homes has been declining since the advent of the housing crisis (at the moment, fewer than 2/3 of households now own their homes). You might assume that the reasons for the increase in popularity for rental homes are simply financial, and to some extent, that’s the case. The economy, while improving, is doing so painfully slowly, wages are not rising as has been the norm in prior recoveries, and mortgage loans, while still at attractively low interest rates, can still be difficult for some Las Vegas borrowers to obtain. Those dollars-and-cents arguments don’t paint the whole picture. Some of the reason rental homes in Las Vegas are being chosen are due to changes in American lifestyles. Forbes contributor Beth Braverman offered some insights in last week’s article entitled “When Renting is More Expensive, But It’s Still the Right Move.” Her first reason is not a new one: rental homes offer more flexibility. What is new is how Americans—particularly the group we call Millennials—increasingly value that freedom. Some of that has to do with the difficult labor market—and the premium breadwinners are placing on being able to ‘go where the work is.’ Next reason had to do with the relative illiquidity of the asset value a home represents. This looks like the first cousin to Reason #1: for someone who needs to move for professional reasons, being able just to pick up and move from a Las Vegas rental home can de-complicate the situation. For those who are reasonably sure they will be in Las Vegas for long enough to offset the costs of acquiring and selling a home, the financial benefits may outweigh this one. Last reason given was, “You’re not financially ready”—which is certainly the most longstanding one of all. Even if a current rental home occupant qualifies for one of the new programs (some can make the down payment as minute as 3%), it’s still possible that the ‘all in’ costs will strain resources. You have to agree with Braverman that in those circumstances, it’s probably best to build up savings, even if it means remaining in a rental home for an extra year or two. All in all, any increase in the popularity of Las Vegas rental homes is good news for Las Vegas investors who are (or soon will be) landlords. It’s also a great reason to give me a call this summer!
A LAS VEGAS VIRTUAL TOUR CAN ATTRACT BUYER INTEREST
For many homes that will be listed for sale in Las Vegas, virtual tours will be part of their prospective buyers’ experience. It’s increasingly common that in addition to the still eye-catching photographs that enhance the online listing, some form of a clickable virtual tour is there, as well. Most frequently found are virtual tours that are actually still shots that can be displayed sequentially—this kind of virtual tour could more specifically call a ‘virtual slide show,’ because the viewer is in control of the speed at which the photos appear. When a one-click ‘play’ symbol is onscreen which triggers automatic playback (frequently with musical accompaniment or even narration), it does produce an experience that’s like an actual tour. And further enhancements can be added, like pans across (and zooms into or out of) the still shots, creating the feeling of movement. When music or narration are added, the result can be quite effective. Another Las Vegas virtual tour is more ambitiously produced: the shots in it consist of some (or all) motion sequences that are created with a video rather than a still camera. When the camera is set into motion—as when it moves down a path or through a doorway, it can convey the feeling of actually ‘being there’ more effectively than stills. For the viewer, there is a subtle difference between what is experienced when viewing a computer-created sweep (“pan”) across a still image of a room versus a video camera actually panning across the same scene. In the video, there is more of something like a 3-D experience because the objects in the room shift about one another. Not a lot…but just enough! So which is the most effective form for a Las Vegas virtual tour? The answer is…not what you might expect. The format, whether stills, moving stills, or video is not what makes the greatest difference. It’s vastly more important that in any format, what’s being shown is almost all that matters—or as they say in Hollywood, it’s lights! Camera! Action! • Lights—blotchy lighting with Las Vegas of impenetrably deep shadows may be fine for film noir productions, but for your virtual tour of your Las Vegas home, it’s a negative. A skilled photographer or videographer will see that most Las Vegas are cheerful, brightly exposed. • Camera—most (if not all) your images will work best when a very wide angle lens is used. It gives the impression of spaciousness. • Action—in both video and slideshow modes, the speed at which images move should be slow enough that viewers don’t find it dizzying, yet fast enough that the pace of the ‘production’ isn’t annoyingly pokey (like this current virtual tour, which zips right along in a progression that makes sense—like an actual tour). A Las Vegas virtual tour can provide a genuine boost to your home’s selling campaign when it is attractively produced—and accurate (thus avoiding showings to prospects for whom the property is clearly unsuited). It’s only one of the many tools that can be called into service to draw the interest of the qualified prospective buyers you need to reach. Call me if you’d like to discuss what’s happening in today’s market!
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