"The best-paid job in all of Las Vegas"?!?!

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appeared in this morning's Review-Journal. (Click on it to see it bigger). I assume it's been appearing for days since the first "auditions" took place on Friday, but I've been derelict in my newspaper reading this week. The "most exciting job" claim reminds me a little bit of the big hullabaloo a few months back about where an Aussie tourism agency put out the call for "the Best Job in the World," blogging about life off the Great Barrier Reef for a time.

That said, this is very, very strange. What could they possibly be hiring for? What would the folks at Panorama possibly need someone to do for which they will earn "up to $800/day" or $242,000 a year? And, even at that level, the boast of this being "the best-paid job in all of Las Vegas" is blatantly untrue. Just ask, say, any of these folks. Plus, the wording here makes it sound like there is one (1) job, not that they're auditioning for a range of things.

Yes, I am an investor, along with my dad and his friend, in a Panorama unit. I've not seen any traffic in board minutes but, to be honest, the thought of this sinkhole of an investment makes me so sick I rarely read the communications. But I will give them a call tomorrow and see what this is all about.

In the meantime, any ideas? Anyone?

The S*it Flies At Panorama Towers

We discussed this on this week's podcast but it was so startling I figured I'd mention it here, too, since there's some other interesting stuff to report on this front.

As many of you know, we are investors in a unit, now rented, at Panorama Towers across from CityCenter. I had already heard some not-great things about some of the residents over there, but this letter from the HOA was downright shocking.

"Dear Residents,

It has come to our attention that there have been numerous instances where residents are using their balconies to dispose of various trash (i.e. dog feces, cigarettes, debris, etc.)

As per the CC&Rs, these actions are prohibited and will not be tolerated. In addition to the aesthetic deterioration of the building grounds, there has been damage to residents' property. ...

Residents or their guests are to refrain from using balconies to dispose of any kind of waste. As unfortunate and incomprehensible as it may seem to report, certain pet owners are disposing of dog feces over the balcony. This waste has either damaged residents' properties or, worse, fallen on fellow residents.

All dog waste should be discarded in the various provided dog stations and/or in trash chutes."

Oh, Andrew Sasson, what have you wrought? This is the sort of place where Leo DiCaprio, Pam Anderson and Jeff Beacher live? OK, I can see Beach there. Ha ha. Just kidding, Jeff.

The poop letter came a few days before another letter of interest. You see, the HOA rules for Panorama -- designed, evidently unsuccessfully, to maintain a certain quality level among those in the buildings -- only allow owners to rent out their units once a year for a lease of no shorter than six months. That is, rent it to a real resident renter, not as short-term vacation rental with all the undesirable aspects of that practice.

But the latest letter is a petition asking owners to change the HOA rules to allow the place to become a whorehouse, err, I mean a vacation rental building. I empathize with speculators, err, I mean owners who are upset by the loss of the value of their investment. I just don't know that turning the building into that sort of place is the long-term answer.

Oh, and one more little nugget. I also got an e-mail from the Panorama resale office. They've been worthless for many months in selling the units, partly because of the economy and partly because they don't list any of them on the MLS, but they say they've closed on four units in the past few weeks and have four others in escrow. This, they say may imply "the worst of the housing slump is behind us." Or, perhaps "this spike can be attributed to the recent announcement of Viva, Station Casino's newest venture, slated to be built directly to the south of us."

That's really an interesting point I hadn't considered. Now we're sandwiched between Viva AND CityCenter. It reaffirms my hope to hang onto this thing for a few years and see where it goes.

I do wonder, though, if they warn the new buyers to carry an umbrella around the grounds and to watch where they step. Blech.

Show is UP: Ritaville

May 29: Rita Rudner

Rita Rudner is having another important career moment. The comic has a new book out that’s both funny and surprisingly emotional and she’s recently become the first Vegas comedian to star in a PBS special to air in June. Rudner, whose girly voice and wry battle-of-the-sexes observations continue to pack ‘em in nightly at the Harrah’s Las Vegas resort, joins us live this hour to catch us up on all of her activities.

In Banter: The s*it really flies at Panoram Towers, revisiting Manilow, notes from Tussaud's and SATC is coming to Vegas, sort of.

Links

Get tix for Rita Rudner’s show at Harrah’s here
See Rita Rudner’s website here
See the info about Rita’s PBS special here
See Steve’s Madame Tussaud’s pictorial here
The site for Ethel M’s chocolate tour is here
Listen to Steve’s inspiration, Terry Gross, here
Miles’ starter kit for new Erykah Badu enthusiasts is here

"The Strip" is LIVE @ 7 pm PT w/Rita Rudner

Hey kids, Rita Rudner's on the show tonight -- live. Really. Like she's alive and we're asking her questions about her new book, her PBS special, about whatever else is up. And you can be in the chatroom at LVROCKS.Com to funnel your questions to her.

Plus, we took another look at Manilow, checked out Madame Tussaud's and the sh*t is flying at Panorama Towers. Literally. Yikes.

Show starts at 7:05 p.m. PT as always. The podcast will be available on Thursday as always.

CityCenter, Then and Now

Congratulate us! We finally got the Panorama Towers investment property that we thought we'd flip and retire on rented out! The amount barely covers half the mortgage, but it makes the situation manageable until better days arrive which, the way things are going right now, should be right around the start of President McCain's second term.

But, anyhow, it's settled for the time being and now my dad, his friend and I are only taking half a bath on the thing. Whew.

Since I won't be able to come and go from the place once our tenant takes up residence, I raced over there to snap one last set of balcony shots of CityCenter. But before I show them, here is a shot of the development almost exactly a year ago, on April 11, 2007 from a nearby parking garage:


Then here I am on July 30, 2oo7 when we did our Panorama walk-through before closing on the unit...


Then there were pix I posted on September 24, 2007, but you can see those for yourself. And now, here is what it looks like today:


Wow, huh? They work fast! The progress on the Vdara, that curved blue tower blocking part of Bellagio, is especially striking. Here's the straight-on view.


OK, back to work. You, too.

News Flash: Vegas Real Estate Sucks

The Las Vegas Sun featured an excellent front-page piece today by Liz Benston on a lawsuit by 40 owners of MGM Mirage's Signature condo-hotel units complaining that their rental incomes aren't coming close to covering the huge monthly mortgage payments and condo fees.

It's a fascinating situation because as my dad and I grumble over paying the mortgage each month on our Panorama Towers unit with little evidence that we're close to selling it, we keep looking with envy at these other business models -- Signature, Trump, Cosmopolitan and many of the CityCenter options -- and thinking that at least those people stand a chance to defray their costs while waiting for the miserable real estate climate to recover.

It did seem like a good plan, except that folks in Benston's piece remind us that the casino's motives for filling hotel rooms can be quite different than a landlord or hotelier's. That is, the hotel will rent the rooms for below cost -- sometimes at $99 a night -- just to get the warm bodies into the building to spend money on the other casino amenities. Oh, and MGM Mirage gets about half the revenue from the rental, too.

The lawsuit, I suspect, has little merit. The contracts for all of these things are loaded with disclaimers and the MGM Mirage one, evidently, is no exception. Heck, Panorama Towers was a full year late in delivering our unit and then failed to fix the damaged things we spotted on our walk-thru for longer after our closing than they had promised. And yet there's no murmurs about suing, even though had we gotten our unit on time in the summer of 2006 when real estate was still a strong market, we probably would've done decently.

One of the odd bits in this piece are the owners who complain they were tricked when a salesman claimed that "the value of their units would likely increase as future towers were built and sold." That claim would seem to run contrary to common sense, no? More, newer units would leave older units in the dust, wouldn't they?

One thing the piece does not address is whether this outcome -- the lack of revenue for landlords and the stilted contracts favoring casinos and their owners -- will soften demand
for similar units over at CityCenter. It would seem that soft demand for condo-hotel over there could create a serious cash-flow issue for MGM Mirage. And, even worse, how would this impact the planned second Trump tower?

Incidentally, two loyal readers/listeners, Rob and Suzie from Florida, chatted on "The Strip" on the Dec. 27 episode about their stay at the Signature, rating it better than their experiences at Wynn and Bellagio. It's worth a listen, and their part begins just past the 1-hour mark in the show. As a tourist experience, if not an ownership experience, they really loved it.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Thought this was kind of funny. As many of you know, my dad and I own a Panorama Towers unit that we haven't yet been able to flip. So I'm still getting loads of mail to my real home address from a variety of folks who wish to sell us stuff as new home owners. Oh, and there's a really heated battle on for the condo board elections, but who really cares?

Anyhow, today's mailing was a first. It came from Wynn Las Vegas. It read: "We cordially invite our Panorama Tower neighbors to come and discover Wynn Las Vegas and all it has to offer." And then there's the 411 on a cocktail party on Dec. 13 at DB Brasserie at Wynn.

I suppose it makes sense. There's no place to eat or shop or have any kind of fun at Panorama. Heck, the swimming pool at Tower II isn't even done and the closest restaurant is a very ghetto In-N-Out Burger. But Panorama and Wynn are neighbors the same way California and Colorado are.

I may go, just for sh*ts and giggles. And to see who else from Panorama is so starved for entertainment that they'll freeload off Wynn for an evening. Not to mention, what sort of pitch the Wynn folks have for us. And perhaps find out who everyone else is using to try to flip these turkeys. Howdy, neighbor!

I'm Sorry!!!

Wow -- it's amazing how days pass by. I was so knackered after all that OJ stuff and then my "Petcast" co-host Emily and I spent a day at the SuperZoo pet-goods convention, then it was Yom Kippur and then it was Sunday and... wow. All of a sudden, I'm a derelict blogger.

To make it up to you, here's some pix I took yesterday from my Panorama Tower unit. It was the first time I'd been back in the place since Miles and I did the inspection and then we closed two months ago. Our unit on the 22nd floor is for sale now, if you're interested. But the reason I figured I'd post these is because it's an updated view of the astonishingly fast progress being made across I-15 at the $7 billion CityCenter complex. You can compare to pix we posted on 7/30 here and on 4/11 here.

Enjoy this and a full report on SuperZoo is coming later.

Leo, Pam and Panorama

We finally closed on our Panorama unit today and, while there, I picked up a good tidbit or two:

* Leonardo DiCaprio: Leo will own on a floor not many above mine. Why "will"? Because apparently he's not closing for another couple of weeks or so while a series of "significant" renovations occur to combine the two units he has purchased. Note that we were told that there would be a $500 penalty per day past our assigned closing date. (We got done on time.) Ya think Leo's paying that? I sure hope not. Just knowing Leo's in the 'hood should help get us a better resale rate. Or maybe we'll keep our unit, move in and one day need a cup of sugar...

* Pamela Anderson: Just as she's something of a tease in the Hans Klok magic fiasco at the Planet Ho, she's also rumored to be a no-show for Panorama after all. Much was made of her buying a unit there, but from what I hear now, she's not following through and, one insider tells me, it all may have just been a publicity stunt. Pam? A publicity stunt? Really? I just cannot fathom it. That said, her unit is supposedly in Tower III, which isn't due until the end of 2008, so it's not entirely clear whether she's doing a now-ya-see-me-now-ya-don't act here, too.

Our Pie In The Sky

Note: Click on all pictures to enlarge

One day in December 2004, my friend Adam IMs me. He'd put his name on the list for a Panorama Tower unit and his name had come up. Did I want to go in on it with him and his father?

Panorama Towers is (for now) a pair of blue glass high-rise condos directly west of the Bellagio and CityCenter on the other side of Interstate 15. (Two more towers are planned.) This was the height of the housing boom, when everything seemed assured to turn to gold, and Panorama had the added credibility of having its first tower already peeking out of the ground. CityCenter had yet to be announced, a dozen other high-rise condo projects in Vegas had yet to collapse and all I knew was that the money I was socking away in my IRA, Roth IRA and SEP accounts each year was doing little for me in the markets.

Adam, then a Vegas-based journalist as well, seemed to know what he was doing. And he was rather surprised when I said, "Sure" with very little research. But then he ran into a problem; his dad, who controlled his savings, didn't want to do it. As the Adam dithered, the unit he was on the list for was sold to someone else.

While we were considering it, I drew my own dad into the mix. He did a thorough investigation and decided it was, in fact, a pretty great opportunity. And so, when the Panorama folks called Adam a week later to say that another unit was available, he passed along the opportunity to me and, along with my father and one of his friends, we bought in.

Thirty months later -- about eight months longer than we had expected -- our unit is done. (Above is the lobby.) And this morning, Miles and I did a thorough inspection of the gorgeous 22nd floor Strip-view 950-sq-ft unit to point out any imperfections that would need repair before we closed and actually received the keys. There were some minor things - a small dent here, a short piece of carpet there -- and all are easily fixable.



That said, it was something of a thrill to walk into what had until now been a theoretical space in a construction site we'd pass by now and then and wonder about. What was delivered was exactly what they promised -- a sensational location and a view that will only get better.

We continue to debate how to proceed, whether to sell it immediately and take our profits or to rent it. This morning, Miles and I even thought about possibly living there ourselves, a long-shot but not entirely out of the question. It is, though, a little small for us. And the neighborhood has a ways to go before it's particularly livable. But there is an In-N-Out about a half-mile down the street, so that and a 7-11 is really all Miles needs.

Anyhow, I thought I'd share these photos so that you all -- and my father and his friend, my business partners -- can see it.