[RedRockAAAA]

OK, so the seed for a plan is outlined below. Everyone take a shot at improving it and then I'll forward it to the powers that be.

We should have all advertising for Las Vegas geared towards selling vacation homes for the next, oh, three months.

Offer great room rates, good flight discounts and a 1 hour seminar on buying a vacation home in Las Vegas. Not one of those high pressure mandatory seminars. Offer and advertise it as such, a low key informative meeting with a realtor, a mortgage broker, an appraisor and a house inspector. Offer to show houses online and in person for those interested.

The participating casinos can provide a free room and breakfast layout.

If its promoted heavily, we'll have visitors who are here to either 1. take advantage of the great rates and otherwise spend money or 2. we'll have visitors who are here to find a house. Everybody wins.

Now, go ahead and refine the plan.

[Yeti]

But in the heady days of the housing bubble, some Sun Belt cities—Phoenix and Las Vegas are the best examples—developed economies centered largely on real estate and construction. With sunny weather and plenty of flat, empty land, they got caught in a classic boom cycle. Although these places drew tourists, retirees, and some industry—firms seeking bigger footprints at lower costs—much of the cities’ development came from, well, development itself. At a minimum, these places will take a long, long time to regain the ground they’ve recently lost in local wealth and housing values. It’s not unthinkable that some of them could be in for an extended period of further decline.

Yet the boom itself neither followed nor resulted in the development of sustainable, scalable, highly productive industries or services. It was fueled and funded by housing, and housing was its primary product. Whole cities and metro regions became giant Ponzi schemes.

And then the bubble burst. From October 2007 through October 2008, the Phoenix area registered the largest decline in housing values in the country: 32.7 percent. (Las Vegas was just a whisker behind, at 31.7 percent. Housing in the New York region, by contrast, fell by just 7.5 percent over the same period.)

Will people wash out of these places as fast as they washed in, leaving empty sprawl and all the ills that accompany it? Will these cities gradually attract more businesses and industries, allowing them to build more-diverse and more-resilient economies? Or will they subsist on tourism—which may be meager for quite some time—and on the Social Security checks of their retirees? No matter what, their character and atmosphere are likely to change radically.


So - No, I dont think this is a good idea.

We have no diversified economy here, which we need, to become a "real" city. Sustainability is something we just don't have. Otherwise we will soon be the next Detroit.

Article Sourced From: How the Crash Will Reshape America - The Atlantic (March 2009)

Also a very good read:
The Next Slum? - The Atlantic (March 2008)
Sunday Forum: Suburbs - our new slums?

[JDinNV]

Originally Posted by Yeti

But in the heady days of the housing bubble, some Sun Belt cities—Phoenix and Las Vegas are the best examples—developed economies centered largely on real estate and construction. With sunny weather and plenty of flat, empty land, they got caught in a classic boom cycle. Although these places drew tourists, retirees, and some industry—firms seeking bigger footprints at lower costs—much of the cities’ development came from, well, development itself. At a minimum, these places will take a long, long time to regain the ground they’ve recently lost in local wealth and housing values. It’s not unthinkable that some of them could be in for an extended period of further decline.

Yet the boom itself neither followed nor resulted in the development of sustainable, scalable, highly productive industries or services. It was fueled and funded by housing, and housing was its primary product. Whole cities and metro regions became giant Ponzi schemes.

And then the bubble burst. From October 2007 through October 2008, the Phoenix area registered the largest decline in housing values in the country: 32.7 percent. (Las Vegas was just a whisker behind, at 31.7 percent. Housing in the New York region, by contrast, fell by just 7.5 percent over the same period.)

Will people wash out of these places as fast as they washed in, leaving empty sprawl and all the ills that accompany it? Will these cities gradually attract more businesses and industries, allowing them to build more-diverse and more-resilient economies? Or will they subsist on tourism—which may be meager for quite some time—and on the Social Security checks of their retirees? No matter what, their character and atmosphere are likely to change radically.


So - No, I dont think this is a good idea.

We have no diversified economy here, which we need, to become a "real" city. Sustainability is something we just don't have. Otherwise we will soon be the next Detroit.

Article Sourced From: How the Crash Will Reshape America - The Atlantic (March 2009)

Also a very good read:
The Next Slum? - The Atlantic (March 2008)
Sunday Forum: Suburbs - our new slums?

That about sums it up. Our local economy needs to diversify. Real estate and gambling alone won't sustain us. We need something else.

[Buzz123]

As John Fremont said to Kit Carson, "Look at all them Spanish explorers, gold miners, Mormon missionaries, and cowboys and Indians passing through here. We gotta take a gamble and diversify business in these here wet meadows."

And Carson replied, "I'd bet on it."

And ever since then the powers that be and the citizens of the Valley of The Meadows have been arguing about diversification and not relying totally on gambling. Nobody disagrees with it...but nobody has figured out a way to fix it. Bill Clinton took away 10,000 jobs between the Nellis Range and the Test Site. Harry Reid took away a few thousand more from Yucca Mountain. Construction is down to nothing thanks to Congress' failure to regulate Fanny and Freddie even after Bush begged them to. Mining in this part of the State seems to have played out. Gibbons is shutting down higher education programs at UNLV. Nobody will support a professional sports team. The showrooms went to recorded music. And Fat Burger filed for bankruptcy.

Everybody is taking away jobs instead of finding new ways to take advantage of our under educated work force. And we all sit around and complain that "somebody else" should do something about it.

[RedRockAAAA]

Wow, that was all very helpful, thank you.

Now, back to the point of what we can do right now to reduce the number of houses on the market and utilize the assets we currently have, casinos.

Any non-depressing resonses?

Maybe to repeat ... how to get out of the crisis, while not instantly fixing every problem Nevada has ever had.

[Yeti]

Ban new housing builds. Prevent building of crappy gated neighborhoods. Encourage building walkable neighborhoods. New Urbanism zoning and retail. Excessive tax breaks for "established companies" willing to relocate here, Tax breaks and incentives for people that choose to rent houses.

Town Square and The District are bastardizations of New Urbanism. They are like a sprawl version. Organic neighborhoods are key here.

Make a residency requirement to own property here. No more speculation buying of McMansions that will sit empty untill foreclosed on. No more faux-lofts built downtown with insane pricing.

Rebuild downtown. Rebuild Downtown Henderson. Downtown Henderson is actually kind of cool you know. It just needs retail and attractions. Tax breaks for any company willing to establish itself in the "Urban Core" and not in a strip mall.

Fund education, for GODs sake FUND EDUCATION. I dont have kids, but even I have heard about how crappy our schools are.

Industries that we could possibly grow in. Finance - we could do it, but many established places already exist. Tech, again, lots of competition with other established cities, tax breaks needed,

[Fastrudy]

Attract new technologies that are up & coming with tax and rent rebates., if and only if they hire local Las Vegas workers to staff the vast majority of their job openings. Companies that manufacture energy efficient fuel cells, solar panels, heat pumps, windmills. Tesla comes to mind in terms of transportation, maybe they need land, building and workforce for a Tesla truck(!); soon they will be forced to be competition against Ford and GM (maybe). Give them an easier ride for ten years for a promise of staying for twenty and hiring local manpower (and womanpower). There are many industries which are or trying to be associated with these up & coming companies. Lure them in as well. Healthcare and pharmecuticals are also predicted to have a rosy future, as well. Give them land on the outskirts cheaper if they construct their facilities there using residents.
That's all I got.

[Fastrudy]

Yeti,
It is scary that we think alike. Are you okay?

[know_bettor]

have the BLM suspend land auctions

[ruready1st]

Originally Posted by RedRockAAAA

...
Now, back to the point of what we can do right now to reduce the number of houses on the market and utilize the assets we currently have, casinos.

Reducing the number of houses on the market? The issue is to reduce the number of REOs on the market and give the competition back to residents.

The education aspect of it is HUGE too. The supply of homes in the underperforming school zone is okay, its the supply of homes in the performing schools that is pathetic. As a current house hunter, its very depressing.