Las Vegas

In vacation home meccas such as California, Florida and Las Vegas -- where foreclosure numbers soared during the housing meltdown -- real estate agents have been employing a new sales tactic: foreclosure bus tours.

Next stop? Cincinnati.

According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, the trend -- in which Realtors organize groups of prospective buyers to view short sales and foreclosures -- also is catching fire in more traditionally stable markets in the Midwest.

And for one local agency in Cincinnati, the tours actually are helping to sell homes.

At Exit Realty West, foreclosure outings are an integral part of their sales efforts, and foreclosures and short sales generate about half of the company's business. In the county, foreclosure sales make up about 32 percent of all home sales in 2010.

Is it just that the sales technique is working or are the home buyers really getting a bargain?

Wish Ty Pennington and the team would come to your house and give it a makeover? Be careful what you wish for.

A Las Vegas home featured on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" is perhaps the first to sell of the several ABC reality-TV show homes that have hit the market after the winning homeowners have struggled to keep up with payments for a variety of reasons.

The Cerda family, who lived in their new, three-bedroom home for only about a year since its makeover, sold the home because of a job transfer opportunity for the father, Chuck Cerda, who is a Homeland Security police officer, listing agent Aaron Wheeler, of Oakville Properties said in an interview with HousingWatch. "They did what they had to do," says Wheeler.

Despite the broader move toward smaller homes and downsizing, some people still like to consume conspicuously, especially if they're wealthy and looking to live in Sin City.

A 16,461-square-foot home that Michael Jackson rented for six months in late 2007 and early 2008 just sold in Las Vegas. It was the biggest home sold in that city in about a year- more than 2,000 square feet larger than a former Nicolas Cage home that sold in Vegas earlier this week.

The gloved-one's former residence at 2785 S. Monte Cristo sold for $3.1 million in cash, a discount from the list price of $3.95 million, says the seller's agent, Coldwell Banker Premier Realty's Carolyn Mullany, who had the listing for just more than one year.

Nicolas Cage continues to shed assets like a stripper loses clothes.

The financially strapped actor, who is selling off properties to ease his IRS woes, just knocked another one off the block. A 14,306-square foot luxury Las Vegas property he lost to the bank recently is now in escrow and expected to close on Wednesday, the broker revealed.

In a good sign for luxury sales and strapped celebs, the sprawling home -- which features a 16-car garage -- sold the first day it was on the market for close to the asking price of $4,950,000.

The 45-year old Oscar-winner owes the IRS more than $13 million in back taxes, and has unloaded about six properties recently, and has at least another three to go. He foreclosed on four homes -- two in New Orleans, one in California and the one in Las Vegas. The actor sold one in New York, has unloaded two in Bath, England and has one in Rhode Island still for sale, as well as properties for sale in the Bahamas.

Low appraisals are on the rise and they're killing real estate deals right and left.

The problem stems from a combination of short sales and foreclosures. Both are contributing to difficulties accurately pricing homes, according to MSNBC.

Roughly 40 percent of all home sales last year were foreclosures and short sales, meaning the property sold for less than the remaining mortgage. The National Association of Realtors reports that nearly one in four Realtors report losing a sale due to lower-than-expected appraisals. The National Association of Home Builders reports low appraisals sinking overall valuation.

Here's how it could spell trouble for you...

The Census Bureau's tally of state population changes, released just before Christmas, has become more fodder for some long-suffering states. Five of the nation's largest states were dubbed "the biggest losers," meaning they saw the highest imbalance between people moving out and people moving in.

Not surprisingly, none of the losing states is exactly a picture of economic health. California topped the list, losing more than 98,000 residents. Michigan, Illinois and Ohio lost more than 170,000 between the three of them. New York and New Jersey combined to lose almost 130,000, and Florida lost 31,179.

Sure, it's fun it is to pick on insolvent California, seedy Illinois, and New York, with its Wall Street villains and laid off media mavens. But a closer look at the data reveals a more complex picture.

You know the phrase, "less is more." How about "less is a bore"?

For the first, thank modernist architect Mies van der Rohe, whose pared down, minimalist glass-and-steel buildings and rigid rules on form and function ushered in the age of strict modernism.

Then came the reversal from then-Yale architecture professors Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown after they visited Las Vegas in 1968. All the lowbrow commercialism, neon signs and tackiness may be "ugly and ordinary," they dared to suggest, but it's ours and part of our history and culture. So learn from it.

Their 1972 book "Learning from Las Vegas" rocked the architecture world -- and we're still learning from it, according to a new exhibition about the trailblazing profs at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery.

All cities are not created equal - some are healing from the recession much faster than others, according to the third quarter MetroMonitor report from the Brookings Institution.

For example, if you lived in Omaha, Neb. or Council Bluffs, Iowa, you'd be enjoying an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent. But for Stockton, Calif. residents, unemployment is at a depressing 15 percent.

What makes the difference between the winners and the losers in this tough economy?