Summerlin land sells for $135M, hundreds of houses planned

In its biggest Las Vegas land sale in years, Summerlin developer Howard Hughes Corp. has unloaded more than 200 acres for a sprawling new housing project.

Hughes Corp. sold 216.4 acres off Town Center Drive and Tropicana Avenue in Summerlin for $135 million to developers who plan to build hundreds of houses. The sale closed last month, property records show.

Pulte Homes and Toll Brothers have teamed up to develop the site, which is slated to feature parks, a recreational center, a guard-gated entry and 561 single-family homes, according to Clark County records.

All told, the deal’s acreage and dollar amount were on par with, if not higher than, recent full-year land sales totals in Summerlin.

In all of 2017, for instance, Hughes Corp. sold around 207 acres of residential land in the sprawling community for $120.7 million combined, according to securities filings.

Efforts to speak with Pulte and Toll for this story were unsuccessful.

Kevin Orrock, Las Vegas regional president for Hughes Corp., said this week that he could count on maybe two hands how often the company has done a bulk land sale, like the Pulte-Toll site, in Summerlin’s roughly three-decade history.

“This is clearly one of the largest ones we’ve done in recent years,” Orrock said.

It also comes as Las Vegas’ accelerated housing market shows no sign of slamming the brakes.

Fueled largely by cheap money, Southern Nevada’s housing market heated up to record levels last year as rock-bottom interest rates let buyers lock in lower monthly payments and stretch their budgets.

On the resale side, buyers showered homes with offers, properties sold quickly, and median sales prices hit new all-time highs practically every month.

Homebuilders, meanwhile, put buyers on waiting lists and regularly raised prices amid higher materials costs, delivery delays and fierce demand from house hunters.

Las Vegas’ largest master-planned community, Summerlin spans 22,500 acres along the valley’s western rim. It boasts more than 100,000 residents, a network of parks, trails and community centers, and a commercial core off Sahara Avenue and the 215 Beltway with shopping, restaurants, office buildings and more.

Summerlin also commands some of the highest home and land prices in Southern Nevada and is one of the top-selling spots in the nation for homebuilders.

Builders sold 1,619 homes there last year, third highest among U.S. master-planned communities, consulting firms RCLCO and John Burns Real Estate Consulting reported this week.

Pulte and Toll’s new site is bordered to the north by The Summit Club, a luxury golf course community with custom-built mansions, and to the south by Mesa Ridge, an upscale project by Toll where home prices start above $1 million.

Toll bought that site in 2018, picking up nearly 130 acres for $69 million in another bigger-than-usual land deal for Summerlin.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.