Pathfinder Rolls the Dice on Vegas Luxury Condos
Taking advantage of limited inventory, the company hopes its acquisition will come up aces.
By Jeffrey Steele, Contributing Writer
Las Vegas—San Diego’s Pathfinder Partners LLC has acquired 64 units of the 409-unit, 42-story luxury condominium community Sky Las Vegas, located at 2700 Las Vegas Blvd. on the north end of the Strip.
The eight-year-old Sky Las Vegas, which came online just as the housing market was collapsing in the 2007-08 period, features one-, two- and three-bedroom floor plans ranging from 930 to 1,780 square feet.
Amenities include concierge service, valet parking, spa and fitness facility, indoor racquetball, billiards room, putting green, theater room, dog run, business center and pool equipped with whirlpool, cabanas and fireplace.
The 64 condos will be rented while Pathfinder renovates all of them. Following that renovation, the condos will be sold over the next 12 to 24 months.
“We felt that we were purchasing the units at a wholesale price, well below peak values, replacement cost and current values,” Pathfinder Partners senior managing partner Lorne Polger told MHN. “We also felt that the Las Vegas residential market had healed to the point where the momentum is showing clear positive signs. Finally, there are no new high-rise condominium projects in the pipeline, so the inventory is fairly limited.”
Pathfinder doesn’t typically reveal its estimated return of what the property would generate, Polger noted. “But the project is within the return parameters for our fund,” he said. Sky Las Vegas also was appealing given the project’s location on the Strip and the burgeoning demand for Las Vegas luxury condominiums.
The property is located south of the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and West Sahara Avenue, directly across from the partially-completed Fontainebleau Hotel. It also stands next to the 1,201-unit Elara, a Hilton Grand Vacations timeshare property.
Asked to identify the pluses of the transaction from Pathfinder’s viewpoint, as well as any perceived negatives, Polger said he and his team greatly admired the overall community, its amenities and the unit interiors. “We also liked the momentum that we are seeing on the north end of the Strip,” he added.
“We felt that with our proposed scope of unit interior renovations, future individual unit buyers will really like the product,” Polger continued. “The main negative is the proximity to the Fountainebleu project. Our hope is that at some point in the near future, that project will either be completed or torn down.”
Pathfinder Partners purchased the 64 units at Sky Las Vegas from the original developer of the property, which had previously sold 345 units and was operating the remaining unsold units as rentals. The transaction was brokered by Charles Moore and Marlene Fujita of CBRE’s Las Vegas office.
