Vegasagent’s Weblog

Hello, everyone, and welcome to my our new real estate blog! Our goal is to keep you updated on the Las Vegas real estate market and real estate conditions in general around the world.

The Tonnesen Team of Prudential Americana Group Realtors has been selling real estate in the Las Vegas Valley since 1983.  Prior to joining Prudential Americana in January of 2005, the team was at Century 21 and was ranked #1 in the state of Nevada and the Southwest Region for sales, as well as placing in the top 20 of all agents nationally.  The team decided to make the move to Prudential because of Prudential’s advanced technology in the Las Vegas marketplace and the company’s commitment to quality service. After being with Prudential less than a year, the team was ranked in the top 10 in the US for total homes sold out of more than 63,000 agents nationwide.

The Tonnesen Team maintains four award winning web sites in addition to numerous neighborhood sites which generate over 800 new buyers every month in the Las Vegas market. Many of these buyers are international, as the Internet is now the chosen medium for over 83% of consumers looking to purchase real estate. Because of the extensive advertising exposure they are able to offer, Tonnesen Team members are recognized as the premiere Internet specialists in Las Vegas and as top sales leaders in many of the booming new high-rise projects going up around the Las Vegas Valley as well as traditional single family homes. 

Please feel free to email us with any questions and to visit our site at www.greatlasvegashomes.com . Or if you are interested in Las Vegas condos please visit our high rise condominium site at www.greatlasvegascondos.com.

It is happening all over the country - unsuspecting tenants are returning home from work to find an eviction notice on the front door. The bank has aquired the property through foreclosure and the tenant has to get out of their current home within 30 days. The tenant almost never is able to recoup any of the rent money paid or get the security deposit back.

And in a market rife with vacant homes for sale, Las Vegas has more than its fair share of deadbeat landlords and unscrupulous property managers. Almost half of the 19,000 homes currently listed are Las Vegas foreclosures and many of them are Las Vegas new homes that were purchased by investors and have never been lived in.

One recent incident came to our attention:

A real estate agent who was renting a luxury 4500 square foot Las Vegas homes, came back to find the eviction notice on the front door. Immediately he called the property manager whose phone was all of a sudden disconnected. Doing some detective work he was able to track down the home’s owner who lived in South America and contact him by phone. Turns out that the “property manager” was an unlicensed friend of the owner. The owner had had half a dozen properties his “friend” was “managing,” and the “friend” was supposed to be paying the mortgages on them from the rental proceeds. (In Nevada, by law you must have a property management license to manage rentals that belong to someone other than yourself.)

Unfortunately, the “friend” never made a mortgage payment and absconded with the hefty security deposits and monthly rental fees being paid by the tenants. It also turned out that the owner had never even signed the rental agreement on this particular property. His signature had been forged and the “friend” had told him that this property had remained unrented.

The real estate agent’s chances of recouping his $4500 security deposit is almost nil. He has to find another home to rent and move his wife, three kids and brother plus assorted pets in a very short time. The owner’s home is already foreclosed upon and he lost all his equity to the bank.

How can tenants protect themselves from this happening to them?In Las Vegas, Noble Title Company is offering a $200 service for tenants called a “Request for Notice.” The service identifies the legal owner of the property and whether or not the property is currently in foreclosure. If the landlord is not in foreclosure, the Request for Notice requires the bank to notify the renter should the home go into foreclosure, which would give the tenant at least four months to pack up and move before the bank repossesses the home.

At least with this service, if the tenant receives a notice that the property is in foreclosure, they could opt NOT to pay rent to recoup some of their expenses and their potentially lost security deposit. And they wouldn’t be quite so jammed for time to find a new place to live. (The real estate agent mentioned above had a real problem. He already had his kids in specific Las Vegas schools, and there were no other large properties in that area for rent. He was not only forced to move his family to a different home, his kids had to move schools as well.)

So tenants beware! Even though you are only renting a home, you still need to do your due diligence to make sure you aren’t unexpectedly out on the street and out of pocket as well.