LAP OF LUXURY

Colliers International, a global company with a Las Vegas office, will add luxury home brokerage to its services, which include the leasing and sale of office, industrial and retail space, as well as property management.

The luxury-residential division will list single-family homes worth at least $1 million, and condominiums starting at $500,000.

Colliers International has luxury-home divisions in some offices overseas, including locations in Hong Kong, Australia, Great Britain and Ireland.

But the Las Vegas office is the first residential operation for Colliers International in the United States.

“Las Vegas is an international city, and we’re an international firm,” said Vic Donovan, senior managing partner for Colliers International’s local office. “Our strategy is marketing luxury Las Vegas to the world.”

The commercial-brokerage function at Colliers International will remain separate from the residential side, but the two lines of business could cross if a client needs services in both real estate arenas. A company owner or executive with headquarters in another country might want to open a regional office in Las Vegas and buy a home here to stay in when he visits. Or a high-net-worth investor might add some local industrial parks to a portfolio, and pick up a vacation home as well.

It might seem an inauspicious time to open a new residential brokerage, given 2007’s falling home prices and sales. But the million-dollar-plus segment is thriving, with record sale prices set in recent months for both single-family homes and condominiums.

A single-family home in The Ridges in Summerlin set the local high mark in July, when it sold for more than $1,000 per square foot. The 7,519-square-foot house, which an out-of-state family paid for with $7.9 million in cash, was the first single-family home in Las Vegas to break the $1,000-per-square-foot barrier.

A week later, a 2,985-square-foot, unfinished penthouse in Sky Las Vegas on the Strip sold for $2.7 million, or $904.53 per square foot — a record for a gray-shell home, defined as a unit without flooring, wall coverings, appliances, lighting or other interior-design elements.

“Luxury properties are selling fairly briskly in this market, and we have received consistent requests for the last two or three years to do this kind of business,” Donovan said. “It feels like it’s the right time to get into this market. We have had numerous referrals and clients coming directly to us to list their multimillion-dollar homes because they are familiar with us on an international basis.”

The luxury brokers who will compete with Colliers International agree the market has enough business to support a new upscale-sales group.

“There’s always room for more (brokers),” said Bill Berning, a Realtor who specializes in high-end sales at Prudential Americana Group, Realtors in Las Vegas. “I don’t think it’s going to lessen the sales of existing companies. It’s just going to add another player to a market that can actually exist with some other entities and people.”

The million-dollar segment continues to fare well in Southern Nevada because the “psychology of the market” doesn’t often deter buyers who can afford pricey properties, Berning added.

Florence Shapiro, a partner in the Shapiro & Sher sales group of Prudential Americana, said Southern Nevada’s luxury market has enough business for additional sales agents in the upmarket sector.

Shapiro’s practice has had its best year ever: It has closed on $150 million in transactions in 2007, compared with $111 million in a typical year. The partnership has also sold homes in recent months for $13 million and $17.5 million — prices unheard of in Las Vegas two years ago. It’s sold 84 percent of the 218 condominiums at One Queensridge Place in Peccole Ranch. Prices on homes in the high-rise community begin at $1.2 million.

“It’s a fabulous market,” Shapiro said.

And Colliers International’s strategy of targeting wealthy businesspeople from other countries should pay off, Shapiro said, because a sagging dollar is fomenting demand for U.S. homes among buyers from Europe and Asia.

Colliers International’s local luxury division has six sales agents. Donovan plans to hire four more sales associates, and cap the brokerage’s residential total at 10 salespeople. He declined to disclose projections or expectations for sales volume, but he said he expects the reputation Colliers International has in other countries to provide a major marketing assist.

“We’ve chosen a discipline that may seem out of line for an international commercial group, but we’re building on a 40-year history of luxury sales at our other offices around the world,” he said.

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or (702) 380-4512.