According to a just completed survey by travel website Hotels.com, Las Vegas now has the most popular and affordable hotel rooms in the entire country. This is great news for our Las Vegas real estate team as we work with out-of-town clients on a very regular basis. Veteran observers of this aggressively marketed city will not be surprised by our recently re-calibrated pricing structure. We have always known that the Las Vegas gaming industry will do whatever it takes to bring people to this city in large numbers. If incredibly tempting financial incentives for rooms, food, spas and air fares become a business necessity, then that is what you can expect to be put on the table. What has been the response to these killer prices? The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has just reported the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year increases in monthly visitation numbers. Hotels.com has also ranked Las Vegas as the nation’s top U.S. travel destination in the first half of 2009 and the second most popular destination for international travelers (behind New York City). I would say it’s working …

It’s an ongoing challenge to operate in a context where roughly 50% of all Las Vegas real estate buyers are aggressively paying cash. To the untrained eye, this probably sounds like a great situation to be in, but you would be wrong. Supply and demand are grossly mismatched and the available inventory of Las Vegas foreclosure homes is anorexic and to say the least. Bank of America made a big splash with an announcement at the beginning of the year that has amounted to absolutely nothing. They claimed to have a firm plan to release hundreds of additional foreclosure properties into the Las Vegas market on a steady monthly basis all through 2010. Not only has this not happened at BofA, but no other financial institution has stepped forward to offer additional repossessed Las Vegas homes for sale either. The result is a situation where aggressive cash buyers consistently move past more conventional buyers in the competitive purchase process. It is much harder than you would ever imagine for a family with solid credit, a significant down payment and a FHA loan to secure a Las Vegas home, especially a coveted foreclosure property. This is an ongoing challenge for our real estate team and our clients that shows no sign of abating anytime soon.

Just wanted to share this great article with you regarding property taxes in Nevada. Did you know that Nevada is the only state that calculates property taxes using the taxable-value methodology? This article helps provide some context as regards property taxes on Las Vegas real estate … past, present and what may be coming in the future.

Click here for article

Also, if you disagree with your Las Vegas property tax bill you can appeal to the Clark County Board of Equalization. Here is a link to the Clark County Assessor’s page that will explain how and when you can appeal your property tax.

Click this link

Do you think a government required ban on foreclosures is a good idea? How would this effect the Las Vegas real estate market? I would love to hear your feedback and reasoning. My own humble opinion is that like many of these programs, the theory behind it and the actual implementation and results will differ greatly. It could just prolong the agony … what do you think?

President Obama and his administration are floating an idea to prohibit lenders from foreclosing on a home unless the borrower has been considered for the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).

A positive by-product of the dramatic drop in the price of Las Vegas real estate is the new level of affordability for those wanting to call Southern Nevada home. One of the most eager and enthusiastic segments of the purchasing public are retirees looking for full or part-time residences in Las Vegas. The first wave of baby boomers turn 65 next year and Las Vegas retirement homes in Sun City communities (among others) are very popular, especially at these much cheaper prices. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that from 2010 to 2020 the State of Nevada will witness a 61% increase in residents 65 and older, and we’re expecting plenty of those folks to land right here in Clark County.

Very much related to the emerging growth trend for senior living in Las Vegas is the highly encouraging job market in our local health care industry. A top performing sector in an otherwise dismal economic profile for Southern Nevada, the Las Vegas health care industry is in a strong position to produce demographically driven jobs going forward. The Nevada Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health bring additional prestige to our medical community as well as specialized research work. Consider this recent quote from John Restrepo in the Las Vegas Sun newspaper …

“The health care industry is critical to a region’s economic development because it is relatively recession resistant,” said John Restrepo, principal of Restrepo Consulting Group. “And, health care employees are generally better trained and earn above-average wages.”

Without question, the Michelle Sterling Las Vegas real estate team spends more time with clients in the master-planned community of Summerlin than anywhere else in the valley. The last decade has been so successful for Summerlin that it’s hard to believe anything could possibly become an eye-sore in such a meticulously groomed residential environment. But, as they say, nothing is perfect, and the uncompleted and mothballed Shops at Summerlin Centre Mall is a case in point. Located right next door to the billion dollar Red Rock Resort, the steel skeleton that was to form the beginning of a new upscale retail village/mall sits rusting and eerily idle instead. General Growth Properties Inc. (developer of the Summerlin Centre project) is itself struggling to emerge from a long and complicated bankruptcy proceeding (originally filed over a year ago) that effected their vast commercial/retail holdings nationwide.

However, that process received quite a jolt yesterday as Simon Property Group Inc., the nation’s largest shopping mall owner, made a $10 billion hostile bid to acquire General Growth Properties. What could this mean for Summerlin real estate and the future of the Summerlin Centre mall? It’s too soon to know, but Simon Property enjoys a strong financial profile that allows it to continue developing projects even through the economic downturn. Let’s hope that Simon succeeds in their bid for General Growth and sees fit to make our own local issue a completion priority in their plans going forward.

CitiMortgage launched a highly encouraging pilot program on Friday that is designed to address the hard realities of people heading for foreclosure in a more productive way for all concerned. Initially rolled-out as a test case in six states, the new process will be implemented nationwide by Citi if positive results warrant the expansion. One can only hope that Nevada is included at some point, as the Las Vegas real estate market would certainly benefit from this attractive foreclosure alternative. How does the program work? Here is an explanation from CNNMoney.com:

Instead of borrowers falling further and further behind on their mortgages, leading to an eventual foreclosure sale, they can stay in their homes for up to six months, if they agree to then hand over the deed to CitiMortgage. The borrowers the program targets are already seriously delinquent, having missed at least three monthly payments, and are well on the road to losing their homes. It includes a pledge from CitiMortgage that it will pay the borrowers a minimum of $1,000 to help with relocation expenses. Citi will also forgive any difference between the value of the home at time of repossession and what the borrower owes. Once the deed goes back to the lender, the borrowers walk away free and clear.

One of the most attractive features of this program it seems to me is the potential to cool tempers a bit, alleviate a certain amount of frustration and most importantly provide a framework for mutual cooperation. In exchange for relocation assistance and complete debt forgiveness, the resident must keep the property in good condition during the six month transition and pay all utility bills. One can only hope that many people would prefer this process to wrecking the home, throwing the keys on the floor and suffering the credit consequences of a full-blown foreclosure. After all, it’s not like the various loan modification programs are making any significant difference. The percentage of qualifying borrowers actually participating has been disappointingly low, and the percentage of mortgage defaults even after a loan modification has been discouragingly high.

The Michelle Sterling Las Vegas real estate team is fully integrated into the world wide web. We are Internet real estate specialists and have worked very hard over the years to build a formidable online presence in our home market. Naturally, we are very excited about the business centric developments in the social networking sphere and have moved aggressively to establish our visibility in yet another sector of the online universe. In fact, team members are already experimenting with Google Buzz, which was launched just 48 hours ago as a new social networking feature for Gmail. We invite you to connect to the Michelle Sterling Team through Facebook and Twitter and we look forward to the ongoing discussion about our professional passion, the market for Las Vegas homes.

MS Las Vegas Real Estate on Twitter

MS Las Vegas Real Estate on Facebook

Lake Las Vegas can best be described as a “speculative” investment that continues to get riskier all the time. A never ending bankruptcy reorganization for the developer, combined with a potential class-action lawsuit against Credit Suisse AG (over alleged predatory lending) is now topped by the headline grabbing news that Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas is closing completely May 2nd. Over the past 18 months our Las Vegas real estate team has been bombarded with inquiries about the purchase of vacation property in this once alluring luxury oasis. It’s been very tempting for many prospective buyers to discover properties in such a beautiful luxury community selling for as little as 30 cents on the dollar compared to peak prices. The questions are constantly asked; what will end up happening to the community? Are these good values at these incredibly cheap prices? What are my chances of substantial upside if the community recovers? Will the community bounce back or not?

We have constantly advised extreme caution and reminded people that if Lake Las Vegas property is selling for as little as 30 cents on the dollar compared to the market peak, it’s certainly not for no reason. As a corollary to this, we also remind people that if something seems too good to be true, there may well be a good reason for it. The Michelle Sterling Team has no idea what will happen to the Lake Las Vegas community over the course of this drastic economic downturn and couldn’t even guess as to whether it will eventually recover and prosper. One thing is for sure, the odds of recovery look slimmer every day. The loss of the Ritz is a huge blow and we wish to express our sincere condolences to the 350+ employees that will be losing jobs that must have seemed fantastic when they first landed them.

The issue of strategically defaulting on a residential mortgage is shaping up to be one of the central issues facing the national housing market in 2010, and Las Vegas real estate is no exception. The media has keyed into this issue and given it extensive coverage, including some very compelling articles in the New York Times over the past month. The discussion mostly centers around the difference between private individuals and their feelings of payment responsibility (regardless of the numbers), versus the way businesses make decisions about non-payment in purely financial terms. To choose “strategic” default simply means that payment is stopped even if the resources are there for payment to be made, simply because payment makes no sense on a purely numerical basis. Let’s face it, a purely numerical basis can become very compelling when the numbers represent real dollars in people’s lives.

The big question for 2010 is how many additional residential properties will fall into foreclosure for this specific reason, beyond the large number already expected due to recessionary factors and high unemployment numbers. It seems to me that “strategic default” at the private/individual level is very much a snowball issue. What do I mean? People always feel safer and more confident in numbers and all it’s going to take is enough people willing to step outside conventional behaviors and norms before the whole idea hits a tipping-point and becomes a more socially accepted decision. If strategic default does in fact become a significant contributor to overall foreclosure statistics in 2010 and beyond, it will be a classic “grass roots” movement. You can potentially see this trend developing neighbor by neighbor, street by street, community by community. Will this end up happening on a large scale? It’s just too soon to know, but the potential for this new economic decision making calculus (concerning individual mortgages) to snowball over time is very real.

As the rest of the Las Vegas real estate market continues to stabilize, the drama surrounding the high-rise luxury condo sector continues to shake itself out. It’s still hard to believe that so many developers and banks completely misjudged the demand for this product to such an extent. Las Vegas is drowning in luxury condominium buildings that just make no sense based on the original numbers. Prices for units continue to plunge and a floor has not yet been found. Supply and demand can be a brutal arbiter when you find yourself on the wrong side of the fence. 2010 looks to be a very tough year for this “urban style” luxury product.

Well … we just completed an incredibly destructive 10-year circle in the residential real estate market. How’s that for progress? Who could have ever imagined it would turn out this way? The beginning of the Bush (43) era saw the advent of the notion that home ownership was a self evident “good” for both individuals and the US economy as a whole. Pursuant to that idea, a tidal wave of policies and practices were put in place and/or developed (in both the public and private sector) to boost home ownership levels well above historic averages. I think they called it the “stakeholder economy”. Without question, this greatly enhanced enthusiasm for owning your own home (and the newly available financing options to make your “dreams” a reality) found expression in the Las Vegas real estate market as much as anywhere in the country, if not more so.

So … where are we today? Home ownership just clocked-in this week at a DECADE LOW. According to the data jockeys at the Department of Commerce, America’s home ownership level just hit 67.2%, which is the lowest number in a decade. After four million foreclosure notices from 2007-2009, and more being processed every day, it’s safe to say that the entire exercise has been nothing short of a catastrophe, for both individuals and the US economy as a whole. Buying a home is a great idea when it makes REAL sense from both a practical and most especially a financial standpoint. Otherwise, it’s just not a good idea … it’s as simple as that.

It’s entirely possible that a fundamental shift is occurring in the Las Vegas real estate market that could have important implications for the rest of the country. As we have been reporting in this blog for over a year now, it remains almost impossible to buy a foreclosure property in the number one foreclosure market in America. Unless you plan on paying cash and bidding over list price, your chances of success are shockingly slim. Why is this? The inventory of available foreclosures for sale in the Las Vegas MLS remains anorexic. There are more theories about why this is so than there are speculations about the Kennedy assassination, so there’s no point in even trying to parse that subject yet again.

In any event, the new development in our market that could be of national significance is the increasing prevalence of successful short sale closings. As a percentage of overall closing activity in the resale sector, short sales are steadily approaching 25% of the market, and are poised to climb higher by many estimations. On the upside of this issue is the simple fact that the banks score a better deal for themselves with a short sale as compared to a foreclosure. In addition, the feds have jumped into the process in an attempt to encourage the banks even further …

The Treasury Department is offering incentives on short sales by providing a $2,500 subsidy, $1,000 to the servicer and $1,500 to the seller for moving expenses. In addition, investors can get $1,000 by allowing subordinate lenders to get $3,000 in proceeds from the sale. The program is effective April 5, but servicers can implement it earlier.

On the downside, the logistical hurdles (and sheer span of time) in getting a short sale approval from the banks on a Las Vegas home have been a bureaucratic nightmare up until now. I can’t tell you how long and frustrating this process has been in the past. However, Bank of America is supposedly preparing to lead the way to a brighter future in the form of standardization and automation of the short sale approval process. Where is the “beta” test market for this newfangled short sale administrative and efficiency miracle? Many are saying that it’s right here in Las Vegas, Nevada. Stay tuned !!

Data recently released by the National Association of Home Builders correlates with the field experience of our Las Vegas real estate team as we address the preferences of our clients. For the first time since 1982, the average size of a newly completed home actually fell, as in smaller. This is clearly a response on the part of builders to imperatives for post-meltdown buyers to be more practical, rather than insisting on more and more of everything. We didn’t find this “smaller is better” trend surprising since so many Las Vegas clients over the past year have expressed the desire to down-size their living space. Let’s face it, almost everyone seems to be living in a new financial and psychological reality, and it’s only natural that this would find expression in the homes people choose to buy. Closely related to the issue of size, we are also seeing more concerns expressed and attention focused on the energy efficiency of various properties on a comparative basis. As much as the “green scene” would like to attribute this to enhanced environmental awareness, the anecdotal evidence suggests that the main concern is more basic and old-fashioned, the size of the monthly energy bill.

Las Vegas real estate presents the most undervalued residential real estate opportunity in the entire country according to CNNMoney.com. In today’s online article focusing primarily on the most overvalued markets in the country (hard to believe there are any of those), CNNMoney declared Las Vegas, Nevada 41.4% below fair market value, thereby leading the nation in this distinction. Here’s a curious coincidence speaking of 41%, it just so happens that 41% of all buyers in the Las Vegas market paid CASH for their homes in the month of December. In fact, between September and December of 2009, cash transactions accounted for a whopping 40-45% of overall buyer activity each month. Could there be a connection here? Could it possibly involve smart money seeking out a highly compelling long-term opportunity?

Hmm … most unique city in America … most undervalued market … massive amounts of cash buyers … go figure ??

When people talk about the biggest players in the Las Vegas real estate game on the Strip, you inevitably hear names like Steve Wynn and Kirk Kerkorian. Here’s a name you hardly ever hear about unless you read the financial press at a sophisticated level … Carl Icahn.

Let’s start with a little recent Vegas history about this self-made billionaire. Icahn used to own the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino at the north end of the Strip and bundled it together with the Arizona Charlie’s properties (which he also owned) that cater to locals from various locations around the valley. A few short years ago (at the height of the market) Icahn sold the whole gaming package to a real estate hedge fund run by the geniuses at Goldman Sachs. Needless to say, the Goldman guys ended up getting killed while Icahn walked away with a massive return on his initial investment in the properties.

Fast forward to today … and who is back on the Strip as a major player once more? Read this from DealBook in today’s New York Times …

The billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn has made the winning bid to buy the bankrupt and unfinished Fontainebleau Las Vegas resort. According to court papers filed in Miami, the bankruptcy examiner in charge of running a court-supervised auction of the Fontainebleau said the only qualified bid received for the Fontainebleau was from Icahn Nevada Gaming Acquisition L.L.C., Reuters reports

What was the winning bid for a mostly finished 3,800 room 63-story Strip resort that already has about $2 billion sunk into it?

Would you believe $156 million ?!?

You could describe this price as “fire sale” but even that would be an understatement. The truth is, no one had the nerve and the cash to step forward in this economic environment to make a serious competing auction bid against Icahn for Fontainebleau Las Vegas. How did this guy get to be a billionaire over the course of his amazing career? The question hardly needs asking …

As an Internet-based business, the Michelle Sterling Las Vegas real estate team takes a keen interest in all things Google. The Google search engine provides the marketing foundation for our daily business process and we have followed the growth of the company over the past decade with keen interest on many levels. It is along this line of thought that we would like to comment on the current situation concerning Google and the hacker-related espionage recently perpetrated against the company.

One would imagine that the Google motto of “do no evil” has been stood on its head in some very intense meetings lately, as the company seems quite determined to “have no evil done to you”. Google has already announced their intention to revisit the decision to censor results on its Chinese search engine, and today brings a new announcement postponing the release of new mobile phones (that use Google’s Android software) by a Chinese cellphone company. The situation seems destined to get much more complicated before it gets resolved, with Reuters reporting that Google employees in China are under investigation by the company. Was this at least partially an inside job? Anything seems possible at this point.

Particularly disturbing are reports that intensive efforts were made to compromise the security/privacy of Gmail in order to gain access to accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists. As the US government deepens its involvement in the matter, this could potentially become a significant diplomatic issue between the two countries as well.

The residential real estate industry is one of the most competitive online sectors in terms of Internet commerce and the Las Vegas real estate market is one of the most competitive metropolitan areas for website visibility. It is for this very reason that all eyes are on Google as they prepare to roll-out the newest version of the search engine that changed the world. Unlike many previous “algo” updates that tended to make changes around the margins, every indication this time is that the forthcoming “caffeine update” represents fundamental change. As you might imagine, speculation among website developers is rampant about what this all means. Unfortunately, there is no way to be sure about anything until the new Google calculations go “live” for all to see. Stay tuned !!

If you spend every day of your professional life immersed in the Las Vegas real estate market as we do, you can’t help but watch with interest the latest goings on in Washington. If you happen to be a fan of theater of the absurd, it was hard to beat opening day testimony on Wednesday as the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission got under way on Capital Hill. Four titans of Wall Street sat before Congress and the American public and acted as if they still didn’t understand fully what happened to the financial system, the housing market, and worst of all, how it all affected the American people. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs actually compared the financial crisis to a hurricane nobody could have predicted, as if Goldman traders had never shorted their CDO positions in anticipation of a collapse in the residential real estate market. Too much for words …

The very next day, a visibly angry President Obama walked in front of the White House cameras (with his economic team standing stoically behind him) and announced his proposal for a new tax on the nation’s largest financial institutions. Clearly determined to get every penny of the TARP money back and more disgusted than ever with Wall Street greed, the President laid out the logic behind his new tax in some of the harshest language thus far employed in relation to this matter. Was it just me, or did Secretary Geitner look a little pained and uncomfortable over the announcement while OMB Director Orszag appeared almost delighted? Maybe Peter was just thinking to himself about his rather exciting personal life, who knows?

It seems inevitable that Las Vegas foreclosures will continue to be the dominant issue facing our market in 2010. Actually, it seems entirely possible that the foreclosure issue will loom even larger this year than it did last year, although that hardly seems possible. Approximately 3.5 million homes are expected to enter some phase of the foreclosure process nationwide this year, and you can expect Nevada, Arizona and Florida to lead the way. Although layoffs and slow economic conditions continue to be the main contributing factors to additional foreclosures, an increasing number of Las Vegas home owners are “strategically defaulting” on properties they could continue to pay for, but just won’t … and who can blame them ??

On a brighter note … this today from Bank of America …

Bank of America expects to release about 6,000 foreclosed properties into the Nevada housing market in 2010, or about 500 a month, an executive with the bank said Wednesday.

Why is this a brighter note? Because the supply vs demand imbalance in the Las Vegas real estate market continues to border on complete insanity. For every desirable foreclosure property for sale in Southern Nevada there are 25-50 hungry buyers trying to kill each other to score the deal. REO inventory in Las Vegas has shrunk to inexplicably paltry levels even though 200 homes a day are going into default. Buyer demand is absolutely HUGE for foreclosure inventory that MUST be stuck in the system somewhere, even though no one can say for sure where it is !?!

At least Bank of America finally said something …

Without question, the last 24 months have been very challenging for the Las Vegas economy and the Las Vegas real estate market. However, we are starting to see encouraging signs that the worst is behind us and the corner is being turned. For example, after 22 straight months of year-over-year declines, the Nevada Gaming Control Board reports that November 2009 casino winnings actually bested November 2008 totals, albeit by a small amount. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a trend in 2010 that sees the steady return of gaming customers to our ready and waiting city. About 30% of state revenues come directly from taxes on casino winnings, so this is a big deal for budgeting gaps and governmental services state-wide. As economic stability slowly returns globally, Las Vegas should begin to see the return of visitors that haven’t “stopped by” much over the past two years. As you might expect, steady recovery in the gaming industry is key to the resumption of job growth in Southern Nevada, and renewed job growth is the key to almost everything economic that matters.

The Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) records the ownership of residential mortgages for the mortgage banking industry, including a large portion of Las Vegas real estate loans. In fact, approximately fifty per cent of all securitized mortgages nationwide run through this ephemeral system that apparently lacks the legal standing necessary to conduct a proper foreclosure. Another by-product of the fraud otherwise labeled as “financial engineering” by sycophants of Wall Street, the MERS system seems to be in a bit of a legal pickle. U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson ruled thus … just yesterday …

“Since MERS can provide no evidence that it was the agent or nominee for the current owner of the beneficial interest in the note, it has failed to meet its burden of establishing that it is a real party in interest with standing,” Dawson said

Wow, it just so happens that MERS doesn’t actually lose any money when a borrower fails to pay their mortgage. The rocket scientists that designed the system were able to disengage it from the real world process of lives being ruined to such a degree that it has no standing in interest at all. That must have been hard to do !!

What does this mean back on planet real estate for real people ?? Foreclosures will take even longer to process and execute, short sales will gain further as an increasingly viable option and people in Las Vegas will be able to live even longer in their houses for free at the expense of genius bankers.

Wow, what a world we live in …

Judge upholds rule on foreclosure

At the heart of the US economic collapse – the residential real estate market nationwide. At the heart of the crisis in the housing market – the massive fraud committed by the Big Three rating agencies. The conflicts of interest were staggering even by Wall Street standards, and shockingly, remain largely in place to this day. Thus far at least, meaningful financial regulation remains elusive to put it mildly, and the long overdue revamping of the credit rating process is nowhere in sight. The Las Vegas real estate market is ground zero for the havoc caused by granting high risk mortgage-backed securities coveted “investment grade” ratings that had everything to do with fat fees and nothing to do with reality.

Rumors have been flying around the real estate industry nationwide (for months now) that major buying interest has recently developed for US property from Hugo’s neighborhood of all places. Why anyone would want to spend money outside the confines of that illustrious socialist utopia is beyond me, but the rumors have persisted nonetheless. Certainly the Las Vegas real estate market is a prime target for foreign national interest, and one can assume that some of Venezuela’s finest (read wealthiest) citizens have considered our market seriously, among others.

Now comes this news from the New York Times …

The government of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, facing a crisis at several banks acquired by his supporters, moved over the weekend to assert greater financial control by detaining one of the country’s most powerful financiers and forcing the resignation of the banker’s brother, who is a minister and a top Chávez aide.

The arrest on Saturday of the financier points to a broadening purge of a group of magnates known as Boligarchs, who built immense fortunes this decade on the back of close government ties. Their nickname is derived from the combination of Russian-style oligarchs and Simón Bolívar, the historical icon of Mr. Chávez’s political movement

Too funny !! Chavez is following Putin right over the cliff !! How predictable was that ??

Actually, it’s not at all funny for masses of impoverished citizens struggling at or below the poverty level in two countries with massive natural resources and NO good excuses for corrupt and pathetic governance.

The Michelle Sterling Team recently attended a class on blogging and social networking for the Las Vegas real estate industry taught by industry veterans Kathryn Bovard and Jan O’Brien. While blogging was something most of our agents were familiar with, the segments on Facebook and Twitter were very eye opening and educational. I think most people associate Facebook with the highly personal process of conducting a portion of your social and/or intimate life online. But Jan and Kathryn taught us about the ways in which Facebook can be utilized for business purposes by means of business oriented “pages” as opposed to personal “profiles”. In addition, Twitter was introduced to us as a business connection tool for sharing important ideas and information. Used properly, Twitter “tweets” can also be an effective conduit for driving traffic to other Internet business destinations, such as a blog or website. The class was more than worthwhile and the team is now even better prepared to be effective in our chosen sphere of influence in the Las Vegas market, the Internet domain.