See something you like? A guide for house hunters

By Brian Eckhouse

Sunday, March 29, 2009 | 2 a.m.

At the height of the real estate boom, home buyers were braced to pay upward of $400,000 for a two-story stucco house. Good news for sellers, bad news for buyers. 

That was then.

These days, buyers are buoyant over the great deals in the valley, and sellers are wondering what happened to the value of their homes, and when the free fall is going to bottom out.

Home prices have practically halved from their peak in July 2006. The median price of a new home that month was $355,435. It has dropped nearly 40 percent. The median price for an existing home — $289,500 in July 2006 — has fallen 51 percent, according to SalesTraq, a real estate analysis firm. What sold for $400,000 nearly three years ago can probably be had for $200,000 today.

Though there is some indication that prices are beginning to stabilize at the lowest end of the market, the middle and high ends are still fluid.

Here’s what your money will buy you this week.

It might be different next week.

This one-story home in Spring Valley is a fixer-upper.

The garage door is dinged and much of the downstairs flooring has been stripped. The door to the garage is off its hinges and the appliances have been removed. The home’s exterior needs to be repainted, as does the swimming pool, whose blue paint is flaking and adorned in graffiti. The back yard’s retaining walls and the home’s exterior also were tagged. Weeds are scattered throughout the desert landscaping.

But the shell of a house has promise. It stands in a modest, if slightly aging, subdivision without a homeowners association a few miles from the Las Vegas Beltway. A face-lift may be necessary, but at least the government recognizes that: a Federal Housing Administration loan of $35,000 is available for restoration, says real estate agent Paul McCormick of the Prudential Americana Group. In many ways, this home resembles some of the emptying strip malls nearby: decaying but salvageable.

The agent’s honest spin: “And when people move to Las Vegas, they move here for palm trees and a pool. This home has both.”

Visitors to this stucco home enter through a foyer with a vaulted ceiling and into an open floor plan, with white tiles joining the living room, dining room and kitchen.

The kitchen is pristine: The cabinets are polished and the appliances remain. The upstairs loft is spacious — enough for a media corner and a family room, though the carpet has deep impressions from the furniture that once stood there. An archway connects the modest master bedroom to a bathroom with a tub and separate shower.

The back yard is just gravel, but large enough to accommodate playful toddlers.

The house, which isn’t in a homeowners association community, is near a country club, has a view of the Wynn to the east from the wide driveway and is a short walk from a playground.

“It’s a good starter house,” McCormick says.

This two-story Summerlin house, at the end of a cul-de-sac, evokes a Tuscan feel with its stonework. The front entry opens onto a family room, which like most of the rest of the house is carpeted in chocolate tone. (The kitchen is tiled.) The amenities are a cut-above: a walk-in closet on the first floor with shelving and a media control unit; a large back yard anchored by a pool and spa that has been properly maintained; and sizable bedrooms with ample closets. The highlight of the three-car garage: custom floor-to-ceiling cabinets on two walls.

The home’s price recently fell 10 percent, but it’s Summerlin, so there’s a catch: $4,038 for community infrastructure improvements. Activities aren’t lacking here: There’s a park nearby with a beach volleyball court, tennis and basketball courts across Town Center Drive, and the Las Vegas Beltway is about a mile away.

This sprawling one-story estate home, in a gated Green Valley neighborhood, is remarkable for its lushly landscaped back yard with pepper, lemon and orange trees. The owner liked to run the waterfall from the elevated spa into the sparkling pool below when hosting poker nights, says real estate agent Steve Shanafelt of Coldwell Banker. There’s also an outdoor sound system, and cameras monitor the property.

The walls of the Spanish-tiled home are done in earth tones, with a fireplace-equipped family room off the kitchen, and the formal living room also has a fireplace.

A third fireplace divides the master bedroom from its bathroom, where a jet-equipped tub complements a separate shower.

Because there hasn’t been much interest in the house, the owner is leaning toward renting it. “We’d rather rent it than give it away,” Shanafelt says.

Half the delight of this Eagle Hills home in Summerlin is just getting there: You navigate meandering streets and multiple roundabouts off Town Center Drive before passing through a guard-monitored gate. Eagle Hills’ roads are winding, with islands of mature palm trees in the middle of cul-de-sacs.

The entrance to the one-story ranch home unfolds into a expansive living room with a high vaulted ceiling. Liberal use of glass along the back wall offers views of the manicured back yard. Two bedrooms share one side of the house, with an L-shaped office and the master bedroom with wood laminate floor on the other. Its bathroom has an Asian-themed vessel sink, a shower with two heads, a tub and a fireplace. One of the two smaller bedrooms has a projection monitor mounted to the ceiling. And there’s a central music control off the kitchen, which features granite countertops, stone and stainless steel appliances.

The price of the home dropped to $960,000 this month, notes real estate agent Aaron Auxier of the Shapiro & Sher Group. That’s the way of the market: tentative and prone to drop.