Tiny Vegas home sits at center of housing craze

updated 8:26 p.m. ET Oct. 30, 2005

LAS VEGAS - Its front windows wish you “Feliz Navidad” in paint that won’t wash off. The landscaping consists of four shriveling cacti and a patio piled with empty cat food boxes. Inside, it’s 700 square feet of confirmed bachelor’s clutter.

And it can all be yours for $1.2 million — cash.

There’s perhaps no better evidence of the condo fever raging through Las Vegas’ real estate market than the asking price on Manuel Corchuelo’s home. Once considered deadlocked in the wasteland where the Las Vegas Strip fizzled into a decaying downtown, the World War II-era home is now happily nestled in the shadows of billions of dollars of new and proposed high-rise condominium projects. Corchuelo is sitting on much-coveted land.

From his front lawn, Corchuelo likes to smile up at the cranes and listen to the clang of construction.

“It’s a good sound,” he said.

The former catering waiter and Colombian immigrant bought the home in 1978 for $30,000. He worked more than 20 years serving high rollers and conventioneers. He never married, saved some money and lost $15,000 of it on the stock market. Ten years ago, he started reading about investors’ plans to build condominiums outside his door. He cut the clipping from the newspaper and put it in a three-ring binder.

A few years later, he put his house on the market. He is still holding out for an acceptable offer.

At last count, there were 93 luxury condominium projects, totaling 175 towers, proposed, planned or under construction in the Las Vegas valley in the second quarter of this year, according to a report released in September by Applied Analysis, a Las Vegas-based consulting firm. Though Brian Gordon, an analyst for the group, estimates that little more than one in three of the 93 will ever open its doors, 15 projects representing 10,000 units are expected to be completed by the end of next year.

Developers tout the boom as the Manhattanization of Las Vegas, the move to “verticality” instead of sprawl. They promise an urban lifestyle, skyline views and celebrity neighbors. They court the young, rich and out of town.

About 85 percent of condo buyers are non-Nevada residents or investors, Gordon said.

Most of the projects are huddled on or around the Strip.

“It’s sort of like beach-front property. They’re not making any more of it. Everybody that’s within a stone’s throw thinks their property is worth $20 million an acre,” he said.

The hype is fueling increases throughout the city. The cost of a vacant acre in the Las Vegas area has hit $601,600 — an 88 percent increase over last year.

Corchuelo’s home is one block off Las Vegas Boulevard and across the street from the future home of the Allure, a 41-story luxury complex under construction.

Five years ago, his initial asking price of $350,000 attracted few offers. His agent dropped the listing. Corchuelo continued to collect articles about the market, filling three binders full of stories and notes handwritten in Spanish. He studied the moves of the city’s real estate tycoons.

“Even Trump makes mistakes,” he said, citing a sale he says cost real estate mogul Donald Trump millions. “You have to know the area. Steve Wynn, he knew what he was doing. He had experience — 20 years building hotels. He knows everything moves in cycles.”

Corchuelo found an agent who, like him, is convinced they’re riding an upturn that hasn’t peaked. The pair has upped the asking price several times and are looking for a buyer who doesn’t need financing.

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