Land for Sale in Las Vegas

Land for Sale

Through the years, land for sale in Las Vegas has been priced from $150 per acre to several million dollars per acre. Let’s review a history of this pricing.

In 1940, a California hotel operator by the name of Thomas Hull was driving to the small town of Las Vegas to explore investment opportunities. A few miles south of Las Vegas, on Route 91 (this later became known as the Las Vegas Strip), he had a flat tire and stopped to change it. While changing his tire, he noticed the large number of cars passing by. Rather than drive into town and compete with existing hotels—and pay city taxes—he elected to purchase 33 acres on the corner of Route 91 and San Francisco Street (which later became Sahara Avenue). He paid $150 per acre for the land and built the El Rancho Vegas Hotel, which opened April 3, 1941.

In early 1945, Billy Wilkerson, who had operated a failed gambling hotel in Lake Arrowhead, California, purchased 35 acres farther south on Route 91 for $84,000 ($2,400 per acre). Wilkerson ran low on funds and sold a percentage of his development to members of organized crime. Bugsy Siegel eventually emerged as the dominant force in this enterprise and opened the Flamingo Hotel on December 26, 1946. 

During the decade of the 1950s, numerous new casinos opened on the Las Vegas Strip, and prices continued to escalate. In 1962, Kirk Kerkorian paid $960,000 for 80 acres ($12,000 per acre) across the street from the Flamingo. This parcel was initially leased to the developers who built Caesars Palace.

In 2000, Steve Wynn paid $270 million for the Desert Inn’s 215 acres ($1,255,000 per acre), on which he created the fabulous Wynn Las Vegas Hotel.

So, as can be seen, in the 60-year period from the time Thomas Hull built the first Las Vegas Strip hotel in 1940 until Steve Wynn built the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel in 2000, land for sale in Las Vegas escalated from $150 per acre to $1,255,000 per acre. 

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