Talking America

Get ready

• Jon Kelly
• 13 Sep 08, 04:23 PM GMT

While I was out in the suburbs, Jennifer caught up with caught up with Otis Williams of the Temptations and their manager Shelly Berger.

They told her that a lot has changed in Vegas since the band started touring here in 1968:

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No place like home

• Jon Kelly
• 13 Sep 08, 01:44 AM GMT

As the sun beat down on Las Vegas's suburbs, it wasn't difficult to spot the foreclosed homes.

There were the overgrown gardens, for a start. The windows boarded up with plywood. And if you wandered round the back, the empty swimming pools were a giveaway.

Las Vegas has long been a magnet for gamblers. But locals who've had a flutter on the local property market have found the odds stacked far longer than they thought.

In the wake of the mortgage crash, Nevada has earned the unenviable title of America's foreclosure capital.

Across the Las Vegas metropolitan area, the situation is grim. The median house price has fallen by 25% over 12 months.

I asked Mark Peveler, 47, a local estate agent with Caldwell Banker Wardley Real Estate, to drive me around the city's worst-hit areas.

It was a depressing journey. As I looked at those vacant porches, I wondered how much anguish their abandonment had caused.

One of the properties he showed me was an imposing four-bedroom, five-bathroom detatched home in a gated community with a view right across the city.

At first it had gone on the market for $1,168,750 (£653,115). But it proved impossible to sell. By the time it was foreclosed two years later, its list price had fallen to $959,900 (£536,406).

Eventually, the exasperated owner, a young male speculative buyer, did what's known in the industry as a "jingle-mail" - he popped the keys in an envelope and posted them to the bank.

I asked Mark why such stories were so common in Las Vegas right now.

"Hollywood tells people they can come to here with a dollar and get rich," Mark said. "It doesn't always work out that way.

"You hear some really heartbreaking stories - families losing their homes and moving into hotels. It's tough-going for them."

Mark introduced me to Danielle Weems, who knows all too well the human cost of the credit crunch.

In 2006, she thought she had found a home for life. She bought her $300,000 (£167,644) house on an interest-only loan after being told that the buoyant Las Vegas property market was a safe bet and she could refinance in a couple of years.

But the advice turned out to be ill-founded. Two years on, prices had crashed and her home had nearly halved in value.

Danielle, 35, had kept up her repayments, but the mortgage company refused to refinance the loan.

She had no choice but to sell and drop the price well below what she had paid.

Having extensively refurbished the property, she calculated that she has lost over $200,000 (£111,763). The experience had left her furious - and cynical about the ability of any politician to improve the situation.

"I've heard it all," she said. "Everybody's going to save us. You know what? When I was going through it, nobody saved me.

"I'm a person who's been paying my mortgage on time every month and I'm prepared to repay my $300,000 loan.

"I have a family. I thought I'd be in this house forever."

Before I left Mark, I asked him who he thought was more likely to benefit politically from the faltering economy - Senator Barack Obama with his promise of change, or Senator John McCain with his pledge of leadership?

"Well, the Democrats are strong in this area, so I can't see it making too much difference round here," he shrugged. "As for the rest of the country - well, who knows?"

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