和美国人为了自己的房子一样，赌场大亨们借了太多的钱来修酒店，这些酒店也太大了。耶鲁大学的罗伯特·席勒这样的经济学家已经警告过美国的下一波大萧条可能会在房地产市场出现。拉斯维加斯再一次上了头条。更坏的是，赌场大亨们在大兴土木的时候，自己弄了个底儿掉，因此很多人都不能用以前非常稳定的收入完成自己的项目，以及开展宾馆-公寓-赌场三位一体的生意。荷兰银行已经取消了对39亿美元的丽都酒店的赎回权，原因是它找不到买家。因此银行的位置现在有点奇怪，它们有了自己的赌场。但是从银行近十年的运作方式来看，这也可以看成业务的逻辑扩展。同时，旅店赌场集团、热带天堂、赫布斯特证明了赌场不能赔钱这一古老的道理。它们借的太多，最终走向了破产。
其它和米高梅的公司也在泥潭中挣扎。城市里面只有零星的工地还在继续运作，9500名工人还在为“城市中心”艰难地工作着。“城市中心”耗资高达84亿美元，有5座摩天大楼，这个超豪华的工程是美国有史以来最大的私人金融项目。尽管公司和阿拉伯人进行了艰苦的斗争，才成功地保持了工程进行，但是还是有很多签署了购房合同的人遭受了巨大的损失。米高梅集团拥有拉斯维加斯大道上的大部分财产。在6个月前，为了避免破产，米高梅集团不得不每月向该项目注资1.4亿美元，这差不多是公司月收入的四分之一。米高梅贱卖了财富岛，购买人菲利普·鲁芬以每个房间大约22.5万美元的价格买下了它。城市中心的房间价格大约是150万美元每间。比尔·勒纳是联合博彩团的分析家，他认为即使城市中心是巨大的成功，并且人们愿意入住，拉斯维加斯也要五到十年才会需要15万间酒店房间。而城市中心有6000间房间，大都市有800间房间，在它们完成之后，酒店房间的数量就达到了这个数字。
拉斯维加斯大道上的房地产惨状是维加斯无数房主的缩影。为了弄明白房地产市场的现状，我离开赌场，到了拉斯维加斯人实际居住的地方。我和房地产经纪布鲁克·波密奥一起呆了一天，她是一个很有活力，长相甜美的女人，今年31岁，刚刚再婚。我几年前和她打过交道。她在衰退期间做的很不错，实际上，她从来没有那份工作能比现在挣钱更多，她去年的收入超过了10万美元。更好的是，她愿意向我展示房地产市场有多么混乱。
波密奥在短期销售方面有一套，特别是以维加斯特有的方式销售。基本上，她的客户都是那些欠款比房子本身的价值更高的人（拉斯维加斯60%的人都像这样），她会卖一所新房子给这些人，房子和他们原来的差不多，但是价格却只有一半。然后她告诉他们不要再给银行付款，银行没耐心把所有的房子都收回去拍卖，所以就会允许房主以很低的价格把房子卖掉。这个过程大致需要9个月，所以很多房东都会在这期间把房子租出去赚点钱。
无数人都这么干，但是后果却被无辜的租房者承担了，他们没有任何过错，但是却在银行发出告示说房子将会进入市场的几天之内被赶出了公寓。人们现在住公寓都要缴纳保险金，维加斯的公寓总是属于公司的。短期销售确实会伤害销售者的信用评级，但是他们会买新房子，所以他们不在乎。
译文：
Just as Americans did with their houses, casino owners borrowed way too much money to build hotels that were way too big. Economists like Yale’s Robert Shiller have warned that the next big wave of failures in the U.S. recession will be in commercial real estate – and once again, Las Vegas is headlining. Even worse, the bottom fell out as casino owners were building, so a number of them couldn’t replace construction loans with the financing that was once readily available to complete and open hotel-condo-casino projects. Deutsche Bank foreclosed on the $3.9 billion Cosmopolitan Hotel; only it couldn’t find a buyer, so the bank is in the odd position of owning a casino – though given the way banks have operated in this decade, that seems like a logical business extension. Meanwhile, Station Casinos, Tropicana and Herbst Gaming have disproved the adage that you can’t lose money owning a casino. They borrowed big and went bankrupt.
Others, like MGM Mirage, are in too deep. The few operating cranes in town are scattered among the 9,500 construction workers still crawling over CityCenter, an $8.4 billion, five-skyscraper, ultra-luxury project that is the largest privately financed development ever in the U.S. Although the company has managed to keep the project going through a desperate battle for financing deals with Dubai World, a number of people who signed up for condominiums are looking to bail. So MGM Mirage, which owns the most properties on Las Vegas Boulevard – the Strip – ducked and weaved around bankruptcy for six months earlier this year by pumping $140 million, almost a quarter of its monthly revenues, into the project. MGM sold off Treasure Island at a bargain price: Phil Ruffin, the buyer, paid the equivalent of $225,000 for each room on the property; CityCenter’s rooms cost about $1.5 million each to build. Even if CityCenter is a big success and people want urban density as a part of their Vegas experience, experts like Bill Lerner, a gaming analyst at Union Gaming Group, figure it will be five to 10 years before Vegas needs more than the 150,000 or so hotel rooms it will have when CityCenter’s 6,000 and the Cosmopolitan’s 800 are completed. And if CityCenter tanks, Vegas will be holding some very bad cards.
The real estate mistakes on the Strip were made in miniature by thousands of Vegas homeowners. To see the real devastation, I have to leave the line of casinos along the Strip and drive to where people in Las Vegas actually live. I head out to spend the day with real estate agent Brooke Boemio, a bouncy, sweet, recently remarried 31-year-old mom whom I met years ago when I was on another assignment. Boemio is doing great during this recession. In fact, she’s never had a job that paid as well: she made more than $100,000 last year. Even better, she’s willing to show me how messed up the real estate scene is.
Boemio specializes in short selling, in a particularly Vegas way. Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house than the house is worth (and that’s about 60% of homeowners in Las Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they’ve been living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until the bank becomes so fed up that it’s willing to let the owner sell the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure. Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit.
Tons of people were doing this, but there were consequences. Renters were being evicted, through no fault of theirs, with a couple of days’ notice when the house finally went on the market. People are now paying a premium to live in apartment buildings, which in Vegas are almost always owned by a corporation. Sure, short selling damages the sellers’ credit rating, but they just bought a new house, so they don’t care.