While driving down one of the main streets here in Vegas today I noticed that a shabby apartment complex that has been there for years is now condominiums for sale. There are big SOLD signs in several of the windows as if to advertise how much in demand these units are. I actually walked this property last year, it was very run down and dirty. These condo properties are springing up everywhere. Many are sold out and the developer hasn't even broken ground yet.
To top it off one of my good friends came to me yesterday with a picture of some raw land up on Mt. Charleston for sale $475,000. He was thinking of buying the land as an investment. This land is an hour from LV has no utilities, no way to get utilities to it without great expense. No way to pass the expense of holding onto a renter. The payments and taxes would strain his ability to stay solvent. Any unplanned financial mishap would be disastrous to him. He told me that within 2 years one of the builders in Vegas would assuredly want to buy the property at a huge profit. My friend knows absolutly nothing about real estate except what everybody at the casino that he works at tells him.
I have no idea how much longer the craziness can go on but I forsee great unhappiness in the LV real estate markets sometime in the future.

Gary

For the US the Economist estimates one year.

Evidently house prices are already falling in Great Britain and Australia.

See their June 18th cover story "After The Fall" which shows a brick with the words "House Prices" falling out of the sky :

http://www.economist.com/printedition/index.cfm?d=20050618

your friend's real estate idea sounds like a sure thing... guarnteed trip to the poor house that is!

tell him to take his $475K into a casino & play slots for two weeks straight. at least then he'd have shot at hitting the jackpot.

i don't know when... but it's gonna get ugly!

-ja