Las Vegas real estate agent Todd Miller talks about the commoditization of the real estate market in Las Vegas. A number of years ago the phrase “Manhattanization of Las Vegas” became talked about as the city grew more vertical. Now that bank owned foreclosures have dominated the marketplace and investors have flooded back in reaping huge investment returns, the differentiations of the real estate products have diminished. This has been good and bad for Las Vegas, creating new opportunities for those with cash, and destroying equity for those that had previously owned properties in Las Vegas.

Todd Miller: Hello,welcome to Todd Miller Tv. You know, a number of years ago when the Las Vegas market started to become more vertical, one of the local economists dubbed a new phrase, and the new phrase he dubbed was ‘Manhattanization of Las Vegas’. Manhattanization, so like Manhattan you know, skyscrapers and all these high rise condos, you’ve seen Las Vegas strip, there’s a lot of them. Most of them that are built had been planned for a long time, they’re not building new stuff right now because it doesn’t make sense and there’s a not a market for it. So that was kind of a new phrase, that’s where it looked like Las Vegas was going. Well, what I’d like to propose is a new term to explain Las Vegas right now, and why this is an opportunity for investors, and that new phrase is ‘The Commoditization of Las Vegas’. Now what a commody is, it’s a product with no significant differentiation between other types of products. So, a commodity would be like a metal, like copper, something like that. Gasoline is a commodity. To some extent, real estate is a commodity here is Las Vegas. Its become that way for a nuber of factors. The biggest thing is because of whats happened with the banks, the amount of supply that we have, the type of properties that have been foreclosed have created this concept of an investor just coming in and saying ‘here’s a bunch of money buy me a house and send me the rental receipts every month,’ and that’s their investment. They really don’t care about the properties. More and more today we have people calling that have never seen the property saying ‘I want to submit an offer and just, you know I don’t care if I ever see the property just here it is a put a rent in it for me’. So, houses and real estate in Las Vegas have turned into commodities to some extent. Wanted to go on the record publically because I don’t believe anybody’s used this unique phrase. I think its very applical to whats going on in the real estate market, and I think right now for the near future that’s what a lot of Las Vegas real estate has turned into a commodity. So, commoditization of real estate in Las Vegas, and that is my update and thanks for tuning in.