Yet another year has come and gone. 2008 was a year for firsts, some good, others not so good. This has been a rough year for Las Vegas. People are still vacationing here, although the number of tourists is down from prior years. The construction industry was also hit, with several projects closing down due to lack of funding. Some of those bankrupted projects have been brought back on line, like the Cosmopolitan. Vegas also had the unlucky distinction of being the foreclosure capital of the United States (at least in some news reports). But even that black cloud had a silver lining. Home sales in recent months have exceeded those from the same months in the "boom years". The huge wave of inventory also helped to reduce home prices to a more affordable level.

If you haven't been a regular reader, I've put together a list of the popular posts as determined by reader traffic for the last year:

• Monte Carlo Fire
• Auction at Lake Las Vegas I was interviewed by Peter Giles of the LA Times about the event.
• Bankrupt Lenders this video is worth watching. You won't believe what they found.
• Real Haunted Houses of Las Vegas
• Vegas gets the Largest Green Building in the World Gas prices at the time were rising fast, so green projects were of interest to a lot of readers.
• Henderson gets its First Green Community
• Greening your House
• Top Five Henderson Condo Communities Top five lists are always popular and these are my picks for 2007.
• How Gas Prices have effected the Real Estate Industry
• Top Five Real Estate Bargains with so many homes on the market and banks desperate to get rid of their foreclosure inventory, prices have been dropping all year, making it the best time in Vegas history to buy a home here.