$17.5M home sale sets Las Vegas record at over $2K per square foot

The Summit Club resort development in Summerlin has set another Las Vegas real estate record — this time for the price per square foot paid for a home — and the former Henderson castle-style home of magician Lance Burton has sold for $4 million.

Southern Nevada has surpassed its combined 2020 luxury home and condo sales record through the first six months of 2021. And luxury homes that sold only two years ago are fetching prices of more than $2 million and higher.

A buyer paid $17.5 million for a home in the Summit Club, which is below the $25 million record paid in June for a Blue Heron home in MacDonald Highlands in Henderson. But the price represents the highest per-square-foot price paid in Las Vegas for a single-family home.

There has been a lot of activity in the Summit Club, which has sold all but five of its 150 custom lots and where singer Celine Dion and Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley have built homes. Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis has a condo there.

In July, Real Estate Millions reported a wealthy buyer with ties to the California tech industry paid a record $36 million for 4.47 acres to build an estate in the Summit Club.

The record per-square-foot home sale in the Summit Club wasn’t listed on the Multiple Listing Service, and real estate agents involved remain unknown.

Clark County property records, in a transaction that closed July 6, show Mark and Michelle Jung paid $17.5 million for a two-story home and casita built in 2019 in the Summit Club development and owned by James Barnes. The home measures 7,782 square feet and has a garage of 1,636 square feet. It sits on 0.93 acres and features three bedrooms, four full baths and two half-baths.

That breaks down to $2,248 per square foot for the living space, surpassing the nearly $1,941 per square foot paid for the 12,878-square-foot Blue Heron home of LoanDepot owner Anthony Hsieh bought in MacDonald Highlands in a deal handled by Kristen Routh-Silberman, a Realtor with Synergy Sotheby’s International Realty.

Before those two sales, the highest price per square foot paid for a Las Vegas home was about $1,100, according to luxury Realtor Ivan Sher with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.

Sher said the Summit home of nearly 7,800 square feet is a smaller home for the resort community, so it will get a premium price per square foot compared with homes of 20,000 to 30,000 square feet.

“The market more than doubled the record with the Blue Heron sale and now this one,” Sher said. “We have a new level of luxury in the city. We are now reaching California standards for what exceptional homes will sell for. It’s the beginning of this new uber luxury.”

Lance Burton home sold

Magician Lance Burton’s home sale of $4 million is below the $4.49 million listing price when Real Estate Millions profiled it in April. He last performed in Las Vegas in 2018 and relocated to his Kentucky farm last fall.

Clark County property records show the buyer as Tarek Tabsh, co-founder at Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies, based on his LinkedIn profile.

The estate built in 2006 in southeast Henderson is a three-story, six-bedroom home that measures 14,376 square feet. It sits on 10 acres in the Black Mountains and is surrounded by land owned by the Bureau of Land Management.

The home was built to look like a medieval castle because Burton said that’s what he pictured when he saw the hill. It even has secret doors built into walls, and when the doors close, no one knows they are there.

The main level has a kitchen, pantry, breakfast nook with booth seating looking outside and a formal dining room with seating for 18. There is a guest bedroom.

The master bedroom is on its own wing with a gym, office, library, sitting room and grotto.

The home has a basement and housekeeper’s suite. That lower level also has a three-car garage.

Tom Love, broker and owner with the Tom Love Group, who listed the home and also represented the buyer, calls the estate one of the most spectacular places in Las Vegas because of its setting on top of a hill.

“We brought in the buyer as well as representing Mr. Burton, and it was a very smooth transaction. The buyer is a single guy (and Harvard grad) who was looking forward to having privacy and looking forward to having his own castle. He loves it and has big plans for the place. He realized that getting a property with its own privacy up on a mountain and with 10 acres is so unique to the valley. He fell in love with it. It’s the home of his dreams.”

Luxury market strong

In June, there were 169 sales of $1 million and higher of homes and condos on the Multiple Listing Service of the Las Vegas Realtors association.

That’s the second-best month in history after the 172 sales in March. Southern Nevada had 856 luxury sales for the first six months of 2021, already surpassing the 2020 total of 825, according to Forrest Barbee, the corporate broker of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.

Realtor Rob Jensen of the Rob Jensen Co. said during the second quarter there were 36 sales of single-family homes of $4 million and higher in the Las Vegas Valley. That surpassed the five such sales in 2020 and the two in 2019.

Not only are sales of luxury homes over $4 million increasing, but price gains have been exponential as well.

A home in Seven Hills that Real Estate Millions profiled in 2018 and sold for $5.6 million in 2019 was put back on the market by those new owners and sold in June for $7 million — an increase of 25 percent in two years.

The seven-bedroom, two-story home measures more than 12,000 square feet and is part of a 25-home, gated community called Portofino with its own private gate and 300-foot driveway. It’s an estate on a 1-acre lot on a bluff above the Rio Secco golf course.

The home has a full-court indoor basketball court and resort-style pool featured on HGTV’s “Pool Kings” and is made for a large family.

The new owner is David Persin and his wife, Stephanie, of Northern California, according to Clark County property records.

Persin is a vice president and financial adviser of the East Bay Wealth Management Group at RBC Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California. The couple have eight children.

Persin and his children are known for having the most extensive American-version Pokemon card collection in the world.

Javier Mendez, a Realtor with Keller Williams Luxury International, represented the buyer and sellers, Joshua and Jenna Zwagil. The sellers are planning to build a home in MacDonald Highlands, he said.

“Right now in the last two to three years we had a heck of a jump (in price),” said Mendez, who added he is seeing price reductions in luxury with more than 450 homes on the market priced at $1 million and above (with 171 under contract to be sold).

“Sales are starting to slow down a little bit because people were asking for a little higher price, but I don’t see any ending to this at all. I think we’re still going to increase, but it’s going to be a slower increase (in sales) than before.”

Routh-Silberman, who was the agent who previously sold the home for $5.6 million two years ago, said that she is not surprised by the increase over that timespan and that even her $25 million record could be broken by the end of 2021.

“A lot of the houses that are selling for what they’re selling for now were worth it back then,” Routh-Silberman said. “We didn’t have that market yet. We needed this shift of wealth to come into Las Vegas and help justify our market. The houses here have been so cheap for so long. It’s just incredible.”

Management with Red Rock Resorts in its earnings call on Wednesday cited their strong earnings in the second quarter on higher-wealth individuals, especially those who move in from California and are now VIP players. Those players are also buying luxury houses.

“I still think the houses are a great buy,” Routh-Silberman said. “It sounds crazy, but I think the $25 million house was a great buy for the buyer. When he gets to sell that, it will be worth much more than he bought it.”

The sellers of the Seven Hills home in 2019 for $5.6 million, Shane and Willow Jager, immediately took their profit and bought a home in Anthem Country Club for $2 million in February 2019 and upgraded it. They sold it in June for $4.2 million and have since bought another home in Anthem Country Club for $3 million, she said.

“He was able to build (Seven Hills home) when construction prices were less expensive (in 2012),” Routh-Silberman said.

The couple used the proceeds from the Seven Hills sale and were able to buy a home in Southern California near the beach and in Park City, Utah.