Del Webb’s Hometown Heroes Incentive ends at the end of this month. If you haven’t heard about it, Hometown Heroes is a  special incentive to all current military and veterans, along with Clark County School District teachers, firefighters, police officers, nurses and EMTs. As a qualifying professional, you get an additional 1% off the sales price towards any Del Webb home in the Las Vegas valley. In order to get the additional discount, you have to be employed in the above professions and have the voucher (I can provide you one) to present to the sales office.

As far as specials go, I think Del Webb could learn a thing or two from Lennar. For over the past several months, Lennar has been waging its own battle against the massive foreclosure market. Here is a quote from their latest mass email:

Short Sales & Foreclosures Just Don’t Measure Up! BUYING NEW DOES!

Short sales and foreclosures can cost you more than a new home because of hidden problems. Also, you can wait months only to find out someone else got the home.

Lennar does make a good point. Home buyers are finding out the hard way that short sales are not what they are cracked up to be. Only roughly 10% of the short sale property listed will actually close. Those are pretty low odds, even for Las Vegas! So instead you look at REO (real estate owned, aka foreclosures) and make an offer on one of those. Instead of a smooth 30 day (or less) close time, you might find yourself waiting 45 days or longer, required to have repairs made to property  in order for you to buy it and a slew of other issues.  So Lennar is banking on the frustrated home buyer that they’ll turn to looking at a brand new home instead, even if it is priced a little higher than a comparable foreclosure property.

Lennar is also offering zero closing costs and special Interest rates of 4.25% (4.7567% APR) fixed for life (on certain properties that close before 8/16 and other restrictions apply (of course)).

If you’d like help navigating the Las Vegas real estate market, call us at 702-493-8033 or send us an email with your particulars. Thanks for stopping by.

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The city of Las Vegas has proposed a plan allocating $20.7 million in housing funds to help get people into an estimated 298 foreclosed properties. Granted, that is a drop in the bucket for Las Vegas which has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.  How much will it really help? I guess that depends if you are one of the lucky few that will qualify to participate. There is a sunny side. The funding is coming from Las Vegas’ share of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program to help redevelop and repopulate foreclosed homes. Not everyone is a fan of the program.

Not only does it not go far, but it really doesn’t address the vital issue of helping people who are going into foreclosure,” said Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman.

Mayor Goodman makes a very good point. It doesn’t address those people that are facing foreclosure. Basically the plan is threefold. It will provide financial assistance to those qualifying individuals to buy a home. The plan will back a lease to own program for people that can’t get a mortgage (the homes for lease will be foreclosures, 27 homes is the current goal). And lastly, the city will buy homes in targeted nine ZIP codes where foreclosures and pre-foreclosures are the highest at a price 15 percent below the current appraised values, operating them as low-income rental housing in the city’s affordable housing pool for 15 years.

While not thrilled with the plan, Mayor Goodman isn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth. Reducing the amount of foreclosed properties and providing affordable housing can only help the market. But I can’t help but think that the money could be better spent. What are your thoughts?