Land Brokerage Firm Adds Vegas for Clients

LAS VEGAS-The Hoffman Co., a longtime land brokerage firm from California has opened a local office here to help banks looking to get delinquent or foreclosed properties off their books. It already has gotten a taste, recently brokering the sale of a dozen new homes that had been foreclosed on J.P. Morgan and Bank of America, which the company has helped unload REO properties in California, and is currently marketing 261 improved lots for Interwest Capital and 24 acres of raw land for Key Bank.

Cameron Fowler, one of four Hoffman brokers licensed to do business in Nevada, says there has been a “tremendous shift” in Nevada’s land market over the past few months. “It has always been more difficult to acquire property in Nevada because most of it was owned by the government and a handful of master planned communities,” he says. “But recent foreclosures have returned those distressed assets to the lenders. Now there is a whole host of new land owners who are eager to sell that property.”

Hoffman contends that land is changing hands in Las Vegas at a faster pace than at any time in the past three years, that almost all sellers in the market are now institutional lenders or community banks with REO property. Moreover, Hoffman says prices are inching upward, something it believes is “a strong signal” that the city’s housing market has hit bottom and is starting to recover.