Local investors buy 63 acres near M Resort for more than $44M
In a rare land flip south of the Strip, a Texas developer has sold a stretch of desert along Las Vegas Boulevard to two local investors.
Seven Valleys Realty & Construction owner Khusrow “K.” Roohani and American West Homes founder Larry Canarelli teamed up to buy just over 63 acres at the northwest corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Starr Avenue, near the new Interstate 15-Starr interchange.
The $44.2 million sale by Forestar Group closed Sept. 27, property records show. 
Sunbelt Development & Realty Partners founder Bill Lenhart announced that he brokered the deal.
Las Vegas Boulevard has large stretches of open desert near the M Resort south of the famed casino corridor, and until the past few years, big tracts there weren’t trading hands, given the parcels’ sizes and high asking prices.
Forestar is a majority-owned subsidiary of homebuilder D.R. Horton, which drew up plans to develop hundreds of condos at the still-vacant site. However, the recent sale doesn’t mean construction is coming soon.
Roohani said he buys land as a speculator, acquiring sites to flip later for profit, and he and Canarelli have “zero interest” in building something at the newly acquired plot.
He also indicated they are willing to wait for the right deal to come along.
“We are not in a hurry to sell,” Roohani said.
Canarelli said he and Roohani collectively own more than 300 acres of land along this quiet stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard. Canarelli, a longtime developer who sold his company’s homebuilding operations this spring, said he’s under contract to sell 80 acres of his holdings on the boulevard for $1.5 million an acre and that he has already received an offer of $1.1 million an acre for about a third of the new site.
He and Roohani bought the land from Forestar for almost $700,000 per acre.
“It’s an absolute steal,” Canarelli said. “There’s no way any of this land should be underneath $1 million an acre.”
Neither Forestar nor D.R. Horton responded to requests for comment Thursday.
According to Clark County records, Forestar bought the land in April 2018 for about $34.7 million, and D.R. Horton filed plans for a 299-unit condo complex and an adjacent 150-unit condo complex.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.
