COLUMN: Carmel Hopkins

Harris Poll recently conducted a random survey online asking which city people would like to live in or near if they could choose any place to live.

Las Vegas came in at No. 4, behind New York City, San Diego and San Francisco. Five through 10 were Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle and Denver

in a tie.

New York topped the poll for the fifth consecutive year. Las Vegas, in the meantime, has been climbing steadily.

Las Vegas has changed so much in the 30 years I have lived here. Growth begets growth.

As population ceilings are broken, more chi-chi stores vie for space in one of our many Strip malls

(a term that has a whole different meaning here than in, say, Salt Lake City).

The things that make Las Vegas so attractive include the weather and the affordable housing. This year, Southern Nevada set heat records for the month of July and are heading that way in October; and affordable housing is becoming a myth.

We, of course, set record sales figures in the month of September for both new and resale housing. But, there is one factor that dampens everyone's enthusiasm a bit regarding those records. Starting Oct. 1, the real estate transfer tax doubled, so Realtors and builders pushed sales through the title companies to beat the higher tax.

As my friend and housing industry analyst Dennis Smith said recently, "It'll be interesting to see what the sales figures will be in October. Chances are the October numbers will be off somewhat -- probably a little less than the monthly average for the year."

For your information, there were 2,591 recorded new-home sales in September, which brings the year-to-date total to 17,860. This is a year-to-year increase of 1,290 sales, or 7.8 percent. The recorded resales for September tallied at 5,163, bringing the 2003 sum to 36,491 for a year-to-year increase of 7.694 transactions, or 26.7 percent.

Smith's people go down to the Clark County recorder's office and assessor's office and hand count the recorded sales, then tally the size of the homes, the sales amount, and all those interesting stats that keep an industry analyst in business.

According to his records, the median price of a new home in September was $208,265, a year-to-year increase of $23,997, or 13 percent. The median price of a resale was $174,900, a year-to-year increase of

13.2 percent.

One of the interesting points to all those statistics is that two existing homes are being sold for every new home. It has been only since the building boom of the 1990s that there was enough mass of housing in the Las Vegas Valley to bring about these types of figures. And, it's only been since that housing boom that there has been really quality housing in the resale market.

Smith wonders how long this rate of increase in prices can continue. Usually, housing markets are susceptible to cycles of demand, which previously was about five years. However, it is very difficult to compare Las Vegas with any "typical" market because it hasn't displayed any of the normal characteristics associated with most housing cycles or housing markets.

Las Vegas basically has been booming on the "if you build it, they will come" premise.

As more hotels have gone up and more people have moved here to work, more people have come here to visit, gone back home and sold the farm and then moved to Las Vegas.

That's not just a theory, that's a fact, as supported by the Harris Poll. We're No. 4 and proud of it.

Carmel Hopkins, real estate product manager for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun, can be reached at 380-4574. Her e-mail address is chopkins@ reviewjournal.com. Snail mail is P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.

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