RE: If they buy at $100,000 and the value further depreciates to $75,000, and there is no one around to rent them; just how good of an investment is it?
These Chinese investors are betting that now is the time to buy (as a smart investor once said, the time to buy is when people are panicking and there’s blood on the streets). A $100,000 house would have been worth close to $200,000 just two years ago and these guys are betting it won’t go much lower.
The arc of the Vegas housing market is (not surprisingly) tightly related to hires and fires in the Leisure & Hospitality industry. These Chinese buyers are probably betting that it’s bottoming out and improving.
Time will tell if it was a smart or foolish move.
I’m hoping the Chinese are right, that we have bottomed out and will start climbing out.
Locally I have watched over the past three weeks two houses in what appears to be the beginning of a new developement being built. From ground up to include fencing. They must have had a crew of close to 30-40 from what I could see. Hopefully that crew was 30-40 of our citizens currently out of work rather than illegals.
Anyway, first new construction I’ve seen in over two years.
On average, a house in Vegas that was priced at $200,000 at the peak would be worth less that $90,000 today.