Casinos Driving Up Macau Home Prices

The Venetian has helped home prices soar in 2011, with some analysts estimating an increase of twenty percent.

The casino industry in Macau has provided over the past several years the perfect blueprint for how to use gambling to drive an economy. The latest good news for Macau came from a recent report that home prices could rise twenty percent in 2011 thanks to the casino industry.

Midland Holdings Ltd. is the largest real estate agency in Macau, and they estimate that home prices will be up twenty percent in 2011. Jones LaSalle Inc. has predicted a similar rise, only their estimates are only at ten percent. A third company has put the expected rise in the middle, at fifteen percent.

No matter which of the predictions is true, however, it shows how a casino industry can rebuild an area. The gaming industry in Macau has grown to the level where Macau is considered the top gaming destination in the world.

“The property market is now being supported by locals whose incomes have risen off the casino boom,” said Gregory Ku, Managing Director for Macau at Jones Lang, “and also the huge demand for rental from foreign workers coming in for the new casinos and other infrastructure projects.”

The boom is similar to the one seen in Las Vegas when Sin City was the gaming capital of the world. Unlike Macau, the gaming industry in Nevada has decreased the past couple of years since the recession.

Around the US, individual states are using the Macau model for success. Dozens of states have added casinos in the hopes of reviving local economies that were devastated by the economic recession.

Estimates for Macau casinos this year range from an increase of fifteen to thirty percent. In the thirty percent figure was reached, revenue would top $30 billion in 2011.