How to Use a Three-Day House Hunting Trip in Las Vegas

Most people relocating to Las Vegas get one trip before they commit. Three days, sometimes four, often with a flight home on a Sunday evening and a job starting in six weeks.

The usual instinct is to fill all three days with showings and see as many houses as possible. That is how people come home with a list of twelve addresses and no idea which part of the valley they want to live in.

The valley is the decision, and the house is the consequence. A three-day trip works when the first day is spent on geography, and it is largely wasted when the first day is spent walking through kitchens.

Talk to a lender first, and have the approval done before you land. A buyer who lands without it is touring houses they may not be able to write on, and in a valley where the right house shows up on a Saturday, that is a real cost. I can hand you two or three names.

Then talk to me, and tell me three things. Where you will be working or whether you are remote, what the house has to do for your household, and what you are hoping to spend. Those three answers narrow seven areas down to two or three before you buy a plane ticket.

Send me the list of houses you have already saved as well. Half of them usually rule themselves out on something I can see from here, and the other half tell me more about what you actually want than any questionnaire would.

Day one is geography, and it is the day that makes the trip worth taking. We drive the areas that fit your answers, and you see how far apart they actually are.

Summerlin sits on the west edge against Red Rock, master-planned and newer, about twenty minutes from a trailhead. Henderson sits southeast, closer to the airport, with the widest range of home ages and prices in the valley. Southern Highlands sits south off the 15 and often gets you more house for the money than a comparable Summerlin address.

Anthem in south Henderson holds the valley’s largest concentration of single-story homes. Boulder City is half an hour out by Lake Mead, a small town with no casinos and very thin inventory. North Las Vegas sits at the north end along the 15, near the logistics corridor.

By dinner on day one you will have crossed most of them off, and you will have done it with your own eyes instead of from a comparison article.

The single most useful thing you can do on this trip takes forty minutes and it is not a showing. Drive from the neighborhood you are considering to where you will actually work, at five o’clock on a weekday.

The 215 at 5pm is a different road than the 215 at 11am, and no map application will tell you what that feels like when you have to do it twice a day for four years. If your work is on the west side, Summerlin gives you time back. If it is near the airport or the southeast, Henderson does.

If you are fully remote, replace that drive with the two or three places you will actually go every week. The grocery store, the gym, the school if you have kids. Remote does not mean location stops mattering, it means the anchor moves.

By day two we are in one or two areas rather than five, which means you can see enough homes in the same range to develop an opinion. Six to eight in a day is productive. Fourteen is a blur and you will not remember the fourth one.

Look at the things a photograph cannot carry. Which direction the back yard faces, because west-facing outdoor space in this valley is unusable for a good part of the afternoon in summer. Whether the single-story floor plan actually works or just photographs well. What the street looks like on a weekday evening.

Ask about the HOA at every house, and ask what the dues are rather than whether there is an HOA. Two homes at the same price with different dues are two different monthly payments, and what the HOA controls in a master-planned community surprises people moving here from other states.

Keep the last day loose on purpose. Go back to the two or three houses that stayed with you overnight, and go back at a different time of day than you saw them the first time.

A house you loved at ten in the morning can look different at six in the evening with the sun on the back of it and the neighbors home. A street that seemed quiet on a Thursday afternoon is a different street at school pickup.

Then decide whether to write, and write before you fly home if the house is right. A buyer who lands back in California and calls me on Tuesday about the house they saw on Saturday has usually lost it. Relocating puts you at a disadvantage on speed, and being decided in advance is how you get it back. I have written up the wider orientation on moving to the valley separately, and it is worth reading on the plane.

Send me your dates, where you will be working, and what you are hoping to spend. I will build the three days around your answers instead of around a list of open houses.

Call 702-881-6562 or email JArendt658@gmail.com. I work the whole valley rather than one side of it, so I have no reason to steer you toward a particular area. If the right answer for you is Boulder City and you came here planning on Summerlin, you will hear that from me on day one.

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John Arendt, Realtor, has sold homes across the Las Vegas valley for 20 years, in Henderson, Summerlin, Southern Highlands, Anthem, Boulder City and North Las Vegas.

This article describes how a house hunting trip is usually run. Every search moves at its own pace, and no timeline is promised.