Las Vegas: From Theme Park To Great Home

The hot real estate market in Vegas may have finally started to cool down - the average home price is $308,874 which is predicted to decrease to $283,200 during 2008 - but regardless of whether or not it is slowing, the city is still booming. During the past year, jobs grew at double the rate as they did for the rest of the country, and approximately 6,000 new people arrived every month, an increase which has been consistent for more than ten years.

Furthermore, very few of these people plan to deal cards or serve drinks: they are here to become doctors, businessmen, technical workers, or teachers. The most rapidly growing field in Las Vegas is business services and professional services. According to the United States department of Labor Statistics, for each new casino job that is created, four others are created outside of the city. The influx of so many non-entertainment jobs has helped to transform Las Vegas from theme park to real city.

Approximately 40 million people come to Las Vegas each and every year. It used to be the case that people would think that Vegas was a “Nice place to visit, but not a nice place to live.” This is no longer the case, not by a long shot. Because much of the desert surrounding the city is owned by the government, there is not much room for city expansion. A good portion of the land is protected by the United States military. In the town’s more than 100 new communities, homes for sale are packed so closely together (usually only a few feet separates them) with hardly any front lawn.

People moving to Las Vegas expecting spacious suburbs are being met with a concentrated city-like environment. The high density of houses per area has had an effect on the feel of the city: Vegas is beginning to feel less and less like the spacious Pheonix and increasingly like metropolitan Las Angeles. People aren’t going to Vegas to gamble or be first in line for Hannah Montana tickets. They are moving to Vegas for financial and recreational opportunities. In Las Vegas, there are perhaps more organic types of opportunities than in any other city in the world. This is putting pressure on the town’s civic planners, which have enormous challenges in terms of water consumption and energy efficiency.

But while the city has almost doubled in population since the year 1990, it is surpassing most other cities at managing this growth. According to the United States Census Bureau, 24.4 minutes is the length of the average commute, which is much lower than the 29.6 minute commute in Los Angeles and the 39.1 minute commute in New York. Furthermore, since the year 2000, this figure has dropped by almost a minute in Vegas (providing that the Strip is avoided while driving).