Almost as quickly as it dropped in Las Vegas, condo sales have made a dramatic turn around the last few months. Home sales are up the 7th consecutive month, according to GlobeSt.com – a national commercial real estate site. As prices have dropped 35 percent in the last year for condos to a median sales price of $123,000, the number of units sold has increased by 35 percent, as well.

Quoting the president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, the site says local real estate "leaders attributed these declining home prices to the unprecedented number of bank-owned properties on the market and the fact that about two out of every three homes being sold here each month are now owned by lenders."

"Of course, this is great news for qualified buyers, who are finding bargains all over town," says Las Vegas Association of Realtors President Patty Kelley. "Once we sell off this inventory of homes in or nearing foreclosure, prices will begin to increase."

RecruitingNevada.com, a job-watch site, points out that "megaresort construction is underway up and down the Las Vegas Strip. Nevada should see a resultant surge in employment in 2009." The forecast for the area is for leisure and hospitality jobs to be growing annually at nearly 7.5 percent, pushing upwards to 400,000 jobs by the end of 2010.