Hello all. I just discovered this thread and find it fascinating because I used to live in this neighborhood. My old house is in the top right area of the photo.

This development is called Huntington and was built by KB Homes during the peak of the late 2000s housing bubble. There is a large master-planned community and golf course on the other side of the street at the top of the photo and I am sure this land was chosen due to its proximity. Houses range from 1300 sq.ft. “starter homes” to 3000 sq.ft. There were around a dozen different models/floor plans and each model has the typical tricks for making the same house look different - mirroring, paint colors, small changes in window size and quantity.

When the housing bubble burst, this was one of many neighborhoods hit hard. I would estimate at the bottom of the market, 40% of the houses were bank-owned. I bought at the bottom of the market, paying less than half of the original price for a house less than five years old. Needless to say, not much commercial development happened in the area during the recession. Even now, while there are more houses going up around it, there aren’t many stores or restaurants nearby. They will come eventually, but it seems like a very high population density has to be reached before any businesses start to think of moving in.

A lot of what makes Las Vegas this way is the fact that the federal government originally owned most of the land, and still owns a lot of it. There are occasional land auctions where developers can request parcels to be auctioned off. Some lots get developed right away; many more sit empty for decades.

Geographically, the Las Vegas Valley is a 600 square mile basin ringed by mountains on all sides. That’s roughly the size of the Greater London Urban Area or double the size of New York City, with less than 1/4 the population. Lots of room to grow, and that’s part of the reason growth hasn’t always been planned well.