Lake Las Vegas - Latest foreclosure ghost town?

Posh Las Vegas development struggles in downturn
Updated 6/9/2009 12:38 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print

By Kathleen Hennessey, Associated Press Writer

LAS VEGAS — It was a symbol of Las Vegas largesse during the good times. Now it's an emblem of recession blues.

With a manmade lake in the desert, an Italian-style village beyond the suburban sprawl and neighborhoods fit for diva Celine Dion, the Lake Las Vegas resort development flouted good sense and modesty in the tradition of all great Las Vegas dreams.

But it has fast turned sour for some.

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To her own disbelief, resident and real estate agent Lynne Hoffman has had her Lake Las Vegas home on the market for three years with an eye toward moving to a community closer to more ordinary comforts — supermarkets, clothing stores, a bank.

She's dropped the price to $488,000 — $40,000 less than she paid in 2001. She gets offers from potential buyers, she says, but they lowball her lowball price.

"It's insane! I'm like, what do you want people? You want this house for a penny? I have to pay the bank," she said.

There are plenty of properties that have fallen much further from the height of southern Nevada's real estate bubble, one of the most inflated in the nation.

Real estate listings show a 4,000-square-foot mansion that sold in 2005 for $2.7 million was marked down to $1.2 million in May. A 1,700-square-foot condominium that sold for $1.2 million in 2004 is now listed for $389,000.

Celine Dion and her husband Rene Angelil bought a home on the lake's south shore for $1.2 million in 2002, as the Canadian songstress began what became a five-year run at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. Since then, Dion has moved on to other gigs and the home has only sunk in value to about $795,000, according to estimates on Zillow.com.

http://content.usatoday.com/travel/GCITravel/InsidePage.aspx?sUrl=/travel/destinations/2009-06-08-lake-las-vegas_N.xml&cId=lancastereaglegazette

Santacruz, who now lives in Chicago, laughed a pained chuckle when told the current listing price for the condominium he let go to foreclosure. He paid $359,000 for the 630-square-foot unit in 2004. It's listed for $76,900.

He thought for a minute and said, "At that price, someone could make some money."

People have to take a deep breath, realize that they made a bad deal, and then move on. Their credit may take a hit for a while, but there is NO GOOD REASON to pretend that the overinflated price they "paid", and are on the hook for, for DECADES will evere recover to the extent that they are made whole again.

Especially for the people who got talked into the no-down/125% LTV loans or interest only loans. They basically got to live in a house they could never afford in the "real world", and now it;s time to pack up and go back to renting.

the sharks with cash will clean up (like they always do) in the short term, but eventually, housing prices will stabilize, and a lot of people will have a realistic view of real estate.

Losing a house is a heart-wrenching experience, but it's unavoidable for (maybe) millions of people, and the sooner they face up to the truth of it all, they can move on. My friends dicked around with mortgage company after mortgage company, and had refinance after refinance, and in the end (after 3 years) of struggling, they left the house, and sick about all the money they threw in, trying to hang onto it.

The fact is, that once you get behind, your credit already tanks, and if there's no way to get ahead of it and stay in the house, you're better off to just stop paying altogether, save that cash, and move into a rented place when the foreclosure happens. Even with the loss of their house, they were able to rent a place. Evidently, enough people have moved out of the area, that the rental places are not being as picky as one would think.

As someone who will never own a home, unless I hit Lotto, I have zero sympathy for anyone who paid money for a McMansion built in a pretentious community. I saw the same thing happen with Disney's Celebration, a collection of rickety and badly-built houses sold for a fortune because it was supposed to be a "Tom Sawyer community."

I had a friend with a working wife. Their two-income budget allowed them to buy a giant house. Only they had to spend a fortune to fix the main bathroom, since the builder mis-designed the shower so it wouldn't drain. I tried to keep my sense of schadenfreude from breaking loose.

such sad situations