Foreclosures Have Stripped Down Sin City to Humble Reality

Foreclosures have stripped bare Las Vegas, otherwise known as Sin City, of its identity and exposed the humble reality behind the glitz and glamour.

Las Vegas is different from other places – it is a sort of enterprise. It is not a place where people are born to live out life and then die. It is a deal people enter upon based on the principle that more is great and the biggest is the best. Living in Las Vegas means staking one’s future on this deal – for better or for worse.

For the past two decades things had been moving forward going from good to better days. The unemployment number was negligible. The old casinos were constantly reshaped into new ones akin to sandcastles popping out and in on the golden beach. There were trim houses ringed by palm trees with a private pool for anybody with a fat wallet.

The average resident of Las Vegas can rattle of statistics like the back of the hand. The city records 39 million visitors staying in 140,000 rooms in hotels. 10 new schools pop up each year. Las Vegas not only believed its hype but also depended upon it. This has been the cause for the shock of slowly waking it up to the foreclosure dawn. Everything has totally changed.

Like any other American city it is reeling under the foreclosure related crisis. The value of houses have nose dived as reo properties have spiked. Unemployment is the highest since the last two decades. As an indication of its woes, the population in Las Vegas has stopped growing after decades. Casino projects have stopped halfway. Less free spending tourists are ejecting from fewer number of planes. Las Vegas is not just a city – it symbolized the confidence of America. Today Sin City is in a state of limbo.

For Las Vegas the foreclosure crisis has led to an identity crisis. The story of Jesse Grice speaks of it. At the age of 27 he started to successfully impersonate Elvis Presley. A Dallas boy he was lucky to win a trip to Las Vegas and since then he has not turned back, till now, relying on his charm and ability to make friends. He quickly made lots of money and bought a jumbo sized sprawling ranch replete with palm trees and swimming poll in 1996. Seeing the value of his house soar he took a mortgage on its equity to set up a downtown bar in the hope of long term secured income. But foreclosure is now closing in on the house as the bar is shutting down.