Las Vegas Luxury Condos at 30 Percent Off

CityCenter, Las Vegas’ latest luxury condo development has announced a 30% cut in prices for deals that were already agreed. This is an unusual move and one that is hoped will rejuvenate the Las Vegas condominium market. But the thinking is that this is flawed – most agree that  a 30% cut in prices is nowhere near enough to persuade people to go through with a purchase.

Luxury condos in Las Vegas have fallen as much as 75% in value and some of the bulk deals that have gone through recently reflect an even bigger fall, which makes this cut somewhat a case of “too little, too late.”Even at this discount, financing is going to be an issue for most people – especially as the condos are almost certainly going to be worth less than the price paid as soon as the ink is dry on the contract.

The other issue is the size of this development, which is due to fully open at the end of the year. 67 acres, a 4,000-room hotel/casino and more than 2,400 condos. Whichever way you cut it, another 2,400 luxury condos in an already heavily over supplied market is a lot of condominiums.1,500 of the units are at the Vdara condo/hotel.

The Trump International Hotel and Tower already cut prices by a similar amount to no avail, but we shall see – at least 50% of these condos were pre-sold when the project was first launched at the height of the boom – so this is a fairly drastic move that suggests a good proportion of buyers were ready to walk on their deposits.

The CityCenter project is joint owned by Dubai World and MGM Mirage – both of whom have their own financial issues at the moment. The project was close to bankruptcy earlier this year and law suits were filed by Dubai World to “encourage” MGM to complete their part of the financing and the consensus is that this will be the last project of it’s kind in Las Vegas for some time.