Las Vegas Realtor Steve Harless - RE/MAX EXTREME 702.217.1680: June 2008

Identifying A Investment Property

So after weeks or months of doing all your homework you have identified a property(s) in your price range that you would like to purchase. The next question you will ask is, "How much will it rent out for?"

To get a broader ideal on how much to charge for rent, or property management information, I highly recommend talking to a professional property management company to figure out what a rental value would be and how much it will cost for the service. This will save you time and money which is always a plus.

Terra West Property Management is a  local company that I highly recommend, Michele Williams is very helpful and can be reached at 702-251-4524. Be sure to tell her Steve Harless from Realty World sent you!

The Common Problem In Las Vegas - The News Media

The common problem now in Las Vegas, is the news media for ages has been inundating the public with negative information about the housing market, and the average consumer/investor thinks they can walk in and steal a property for nothing. That is just not the case so much anymore, but that being said there are still opportunities where you can buy $100,000 - $150,000 below the market values of 2005. The saving grace of Las Vegas, is the jobs that will be created from all the building that currently is happening in town. Experts believe 42,200 jobs will be created in just the next 3 years.

Currently, Las vegas is the Mecca for foreclosures and with the stock market going sideways and the oil crisis, the Las Vegas real estate market is busier then most people truly understand. The amount of foreign investors is truly amazing, and I see bidding wars on properties that quite frankly I myself would not be paying that amount for.

It is quite common to see as many as 10-20 offers on property in some neighborhoods.

So as an investor to save you time, I recommend sitting down with your agent and pre-viewing properties online to ascertain a value and to call the selling agent to see how many offers are currently on the property that you are interested in making an offer on.

Questions For Investors

The 4 questions I have for my investors:

How long do you want to hold the property?

Do you want to rent it out?

Is this a second home for you?

How much profit do you really intend to make?

This is just a sample of what we should talk about when we get together.

If you would like to sit down and explore the real estate investing opportunities in Las Vegas, feel free to call Steve Harless - Realty World - 702.217.1680

Now is no the time to play politics...Our fellow Americans need help now, I strongly urge the Active Rain community to band together and contact their politicians so that our country can get over this mess.

Write your representative

In this article by By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, she wrote  A broad bipartisan coalition supporting a massive foreclosure rescue beat back GOP efforts to gut it Thursday, defying a White House veto threat and quashing a bid to make it victim to revelations about two senators' VIP mortgages.

Read the full article here

Unite NOW for this cause!

Resales pass 2,600 units for first month since March '07; new-home sales stall

Great news! The number of existing homes sold locally in May surged to its best showing in 14 months even as sales of new homes lagged, according to two new housing reports released this week.

Statistics from local research firms Home Builders Research and SalesTraq revealed a 5.2 percent jump in resales in May, with buyers snapping up 2,606 units. Buyers bought 2,477 existing homes in the same month a year ago.

"May data for the Las Vegas housing market suggests that recovery has begun for the resale market," SalesTraq President Larry Murphy said.

The last time resale closings surpassed 2,600 homes in a single month was March 2007. Closings on existing properties spent fall and winter mired at around 1,500 units a month.

Analysts said May's results don't herald a permanent end to declines in local home prices and sales.

Rising oil prices and a deteriorating job market could complicate chances for a widespread housing recovery, Murphy said. What's more, though banks sold about 1,300 foreclosures in May, they took possession of another 2,500 or so foreclosed homes in the same month. Until that statistic reverses itself, and banks are disposing of more homes than they're taking over, prices could continue to slump.

video credit: originally uploaded to YouTube on June 5, 2008 by etrade

  how can you not be smiling when this is playing?

Today I read an article that really made sense....viewers tell me what you think afterwards.

The president of Iran said "certain powers" were keeping an artificial oil price to "fund the costs of their wars and occupations and to justify investments to exploit new sources of energy at the bottom of the oceans, at the poles and elsewhere."

Certain powers? could this be the US? duh...who else could it be! time for this synthetic war on terrorism to end, and to change the direction of our economy. how did the Vietnam war end.....with the US running into the South China Sea .....I served on the ship that received those refugees, The USS - Blueridge LCC-19

Big Question....HOW ARE WE GOING TO END THIS FIASCO?

Iran's Ahmadinejad says oil price artificial

The current high price of oil is artificial and the market is well supplied with crude, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday, pinning the blame on the sliding dollar.

 Ahmadinejad goes on to say that the fall in the dollar was a prime cause of the world's economic problems, saying it had affected "the world economy and in particular the economy of world energy exporters."

You know, in my heart I always felt there was a rat somewhere down the line artificially inflating the price of gas for profit.  Now I am convinced it is being manipulated.

Reflecting the stimulus from government rebate checks, retail sales rose a full percentage point in May, double what economists were anticipating, the Commerce Department reported June 12. Not including the higher prices consumers paid for gasoline, retail sales still rose a strong 0.8%, the biggest increase in a year.

Sales of existing homes in April also caught economists off guard, climbing 6.3% instead of the negative 0.4% drop they were predicting. The new reading, issued June 9 by the National Association of REALTORS®, indicates that the drop in property values has started attracting more buyers and bargain hunters.

Soaring gasoline prices helped push consumer inflation up 0.6% in May, the fastest pace in six months, the Labor Department said June 12. But core inflation, which strips out volatile gas and food prices, edged up a modest 0.2%, easing concerns that big jumps in energy and food costs were breaking through to more widespread inflation.

The nation's trade deficit - what we import versus what we export - rose 7.8% to $60.9 billion, the largest imbalance since March 2007, the Commerce Department said June 10. Driving the deficit was a $4.3 billion increase in crude oil imports, which jumped to a record $29.3 billion in April.

New claims for unemployment benefits rose to 384,000, an increase of 25,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported June 12.

More upbeat economic news came from the Mortgage Bankers Association, which said that mortgage loan applications rose 10.9% from the previous week. Purchase applications increased 12.1% while refi volume was up 8.4% from the previous week.

Economic news due this week includes reports on the Producer Price Index and housing starts on June 17.

Have a nice week! Steve Harless -  Las Vegas Real Estate   

The rally that drove oil to a record $139.12 a barrel last week surpassed the gains in Internet stocks that preceded the dot-com crash in 2000.

Crude rose 697 percent since trading at $17.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in November 2001, and reached 28 record highs this year. The last time a similar pattern was seen in equities was eight years ago, when Internet-related stocks sent the Nasdaq Composite Index up 640 percent to its highest level ever, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Bespoke Investment Group LLC.

The Nasdaq tumbled 78 percent from its March 2000 peak, erasing about $6 trillion of market value, as investors concluded that prices weren't supported by profits at companies such as Broadcom Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. Billionaire investor George Soros and Stephen Schork, president of Schork Group Inc., say oil is ready to tumble because prices aren't justified by supply and demand.

``There's nothing different between this mania, the dot-com mania, the real estate mania, the Dow Jones mania of the 1920s, the South Sea bubble and the Dutch tulip-bulb mania,'' said Schork, whose Villanova, Pennsylvania-based firm advises the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Wall Street firms and oil companies on the outlook for energy prices. ``History repeats itself over and over and over again.''

I am totally amazed at the greed o the oil executives..They are totally throwing the American people under the bus with these unsubstantiated price increases..My father taught me two things in life...never underestimate the other fellow's jealousy &  especially his greed.

Viewers, since putting in the translation services of google, tons of hits are pouring into my site!

I highly recommend using it.... look and see the difference:

Traffic Rank for Viewlasvegasrealestate.com:

Alexa traffic rank based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach)

 Learn more about Alexa Traffic...

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Page Views per user for Viewlasvegasrealestate.com:

The number of unique pages viewed per user per day for this site

Yesterday	1 wk. Avg.	3 mos. Avg.	3 mos. Change
N/A*	874	29685.2	51%

here is the info to install the widget:

go to your settings page: then go to your blog description section
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The increase could bring Saudi output to a production level of 10 million barrels a day, which, if sustained, would be the kingdom's highest ever. The move was seen as a sign that the Saudis are becoming increasingly nervous about both the political and economic effect of high oil prices. In recent weeks, soaring fuel costs have incited demonstrations and protests from Italy to Indonesia.

Saudi Arabia is currently pumping 9.45 million barrels a day, which is an increase of about 300,000 barrels from last month.

While they are reaping record profits, the Saudis are concerned that today's record prices might eventually damp economic growth and lead to lower oil demand, as is already happening in the United States and other developed countries. The current prices are also making alternative fuels more viable, threatening the long-term prospects of the oil-based economy. how are gas prices affecting your business?