Las Vegas turns 100 on May 15, but it is hardly getting old. With a history as potent as the cock tails-by-the-yard" peddled in its myriad bars, the US city is not so much coming of age as coming into its own. And the hottest players in town right now are not roulette and blackjack specialists but real estate agents.

Property prices in the Las Vegas metropolitan area saw increases of up to 50 per cent last year, led by desirable suburbs such as Summerlin, compared with an average rise of 11.1 per cent across the US. A remarkable 6,000 people relocate to the city each month, making it the fastest-growing urban area in the country. And residential developers from as far away as New York and Chicago are rushing to cash in.

Robert Hamrick, broker president of Coldwell Banker Premier Realty, thinks the growth stems from outsiders finally realizing that Vegas property was seriously undervalued. "For 22 years we had quiet, consistent, growth with single-digit appreciation," he says. "But I've never seen anything like this before."

There is a precedent for people being slow to spot the potential of land here. The first person of European ancestry to see the valley of wild grasses and plentiful water amid an inhospitable desert was a scout named Rafael Rivera. It was 1700, and he named the place Las Vegas, Spanish for "the meadows". On Saturday nights, parts of downtown and The Strip do still look like Sodom and Gomorrah. But Vegas's current expansion rests on its status not only as a gambling and showgirl mecca but also a leisure destination, with first-class shops, entertainment and restaurants. Legitimate industry expunged the mob long ago and in the 1990s pioneering entrepreneur Steve Wynn pushed Vegas into the ultra-luxe market with his Mirage and Bellagio resorts.

The metropolitan area has one of the strongest economies in the US, gaining 30,000 new jobs in 2003 and an estimated 37,000 in 2004, even as unemployment rose on a national level. With no state tax and low business taxes, especially in comparison with neighbouring California, it continues to attract new companies, recently in the health care and computer technology sectors. Most importantly, however, its core tourist trade is thriving: visitor numbers jumped from 28m in 1994 to 37m last year, and the city's megalithic hotel-casinos, including 15 of the 19 largest in the world, now run at 89 per cent annual capacity, due in part to its status as convention central.

Las Vegas Real Estate Land Availability

The city's rise is literal as well as statistical as its expanding population transforms the flat and uninteresting pancake topography around The Strip into verdant suburbs and silvery skyscrapers. The reason is lack of land to sprawl.

"In Nevada, 87 per cent of the land is federally owned," explains Mike Ford, a director at the Conservation Fund, which emphasizes environmental and economic goals in planning. "Las Vegas is, in effect, a small island of private land surrounded by an ocean of public land with very defined exterior growth limits."

It is highly unlikely that designated wilderness and National Park land will be opened to developers, so the only option is to go vertical. "The high-rise condo market here has gone nuts," says Richard Worthington, president of the Molasky Group, one of Vegas's oldest and largest developers. "Park Towers, which we built in 2001, was the first residential high-rise. Just four years later, 125 further towers have been announced."

Sales in Park Tower give a good indication of property-price appreciation in the city. Condos that sold for $360-$400 per sq ft in 2001 are now going for $900-$1,000 per sq ft. Downtown, where prices range from $400-$500 per sq ft, shops, restaurants, theatres and a hospital are being built on a 61-acre parcel of land intended to regenerate the area.

Las Vegas Real Estate New Construction

With so much new residential construction to choose from, buyers must be careful, says high-rise investment specialist Shayna Goldstein. "New builders often don't realize how much money and due diligence it takes to get a high rise out of the ground," she explains.

But right now, seasoned US developers, such as American Invsco, Turnberry Associates and The Related Group, are behind the city's most prominent projects. Both Turnberry's eponymous, 45-storey twin towers and The Related Group's 48-storey Icon nearly sold out before the construction crews broke ground, and both companies have new buildings in their pipelines.

American Invsco, meanwhile, is marketing its five-building, 678-unit The Meridian scheme not only in the US but also around the world with launches in London, Dublin, Singapore, Johannesburg and Cape Town. This is a significant shift because, even as Vegas's hotel developers created versions of Paris, Venice and Luxor around them, residential builders were slow to court international buyers.

Set on 16 lushly landscaped acres, The Meridian offers that tranquil meadow effect that Rafael Rivera saw from his horse, but it is also a stone's throw from the gangster Bugsy Siegel's old Flamingo (now Hilton) hotel casino. Prices start at $305,000 for a large studio apartment.

The growth of Las Vegas Real Estate has also seen suburbs, such as Summerlin, Henderson and Green Valley attracting re-locators, especially from California. Since the first house went up in the late 1990s, Summerlin has remained the fastest-growing community in America. Built to a so-called "master-plan", it consists of different neighborhood villages with shops, parks, nature trails and golf courses and tends to attract families and professionals escaping the neon pizzazz of The Strip.

Although there are few bargains left - a decent four-bedroom Tuscan-style villa will set you back about $800,000 - prices still compare very favorably with California. In newer communities, such as Aliante, prices for a four-bedroom villa start at $450,000.

The only sour note on the Las Vegas boom is sounded by Ed McMahon of the Urban Land Institute. He wonders where the bartenders, croupiers and show-girls who work on The Strip are going to live come 2010. "They just can't afford these prices and will soon be totally priced out of the market," he argues. "But they're the people that keep the city in business and make it what it is."

Worthington says that others worry about the "Manhattanisation" of Vegas now that the big-league developers have moved in. But neither factor is likely to deter purchasers or halt the continuing local building bonanza.

Las Vegas has always attracted those with the courage to gamble. The difference is that the latest arrivals are putting their money on the comparative security of property, not on a poker table.

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