Place Your Bets: Vegas or Miami?

It is common knowledge that 2008 was a bad year for everyone, and 2009 was only slightly better. It can’t be too long before real estate know-it-alls play the “blame game,” and it seems Vegas has a bone to pick with Miami.

For a few years now, Las Vegas and Miami have been competing for the title of, “the nation’s hardest hit condo market.” It seems as though Vegas is winning both the title and the game, arguing that South Florida is the reason for Vegas’s real estate woes.

“They built less in Las Vegas than in Miami,” but there are fewer potential buyers, said Marty Burger, president and chief executive of Artisan Real Estate Ventures in Las Vegas.

Vegas developers sought to expand their empires on false assumptions, such as the notion that frequent visitors would prefer to invest in second homes than hotel rooms. And it seems as though South Florida Developers made the same mistake when attempting to break into Sin City’s condo market, with SoFla development companies launching massive assaults on the Vegas market, armed with celeb-studded cocktail parties and million-dollar sales centers during the boom. Everyone knows how that turned out.

“Outside developers came here and really misjudged this market,” said Irwin Molasky, a veteran Las Vegas real estate developer. “It is not a Miami market. We don’t have the South American trade, the New York trade, and they just thought, if you build it, it will come; unfortunately, they were wrong.”

That was then, and this is now. Miami is burning off its excess supply of condos nearly twice as quickly as Las Vegas. The median price for an existing condo in Las Vegas stood at $72,500 in November and $149,000 in Miami-Dade. And so the feud continues.

Via: Winnipeg Free Press