In a city built on defying the odds, Mark Barclay believes he has discovered a sure bet. The Dorset-based pilot is blowing half a million dollars on a flat in a Las Vegas tower block.

The two-bedroom flat is not actually built yet: like much else in Vegas, it exists only on paper. Barclay isn’t worried: he says he hopes never to set eyes on it anyway. Truth be told, he is not impressed by modern Vegas. He finds it far too crowded.

But wait, there is more. This week Barclay, 46, is poised to put down more money on a second property in an obscure desert town that few outside Nevada have ever heard of. Is he addicted to risk? Not in the least. “It’s what I call a positive punt,” he says, speaking from his home in Bournemouth. “I fly private jets around the world, so I am always looking for global investment opportunities. There is nothing more attractive right now than Nevada.”

In recent years, lured by the collapse of the dollar, Britons have been trading up from renting in Florida to buying condominiums (freehold flats) in New York and now the west: first California and, in recent months, propelled by the Virgin Atlantic service, Las Vegas.

Right now, Barclay is a pioneer. For about $500,000 (£271,000), he has bought into SilverCrest, a future condo high-rise financed by Devon-based Select Resorts and managed by Savills International. At present, SilverCrest is a dusty, empty corner of a housing estate about 15 minutes from the casino-dominated Strip, but right next to a new hospital — vital for Brits vulnerable to heat stroke caused by the “Desert Breath”, as locals describe the city’s 100F heat in the shade.

Given my own experience of Las Vegas, which changes shape and mass every few months, there are good odds that within a year, SilverCrest will be an impressive edifice dominating the pink and yellow Italianate villas built in the old days (back in the 1990s) around its skirts.

Barclay looked at a floorplan and got a 5% discount for signing early — “I was after 10%, but I could not negotiate that,” he says, ruefully. His plan is to let the apartment via Savills, “who will do the hard work”, to workers at nearby casinos.

“There is a massive shortage of rental accommodation in Las Vegas,” Barclay says. “Most casino staff cannot afford to buy there anymore. That’s why I call SilverCrest a positive punt.”

Perhaps riskier is his $280,000 (£150,000) bet on Desert Oasis, a condo complex in West Wendover, a tiny town near Nevada’s border with Utah. The hook is the city’s five expanding casinos, patronised by renegade Utah Mormons, which have produced a sharp increase in demand for staff housing. The ground won’t be broken until later this summer. “If it doesn’t work out in four years’ time, I will sell it on,” says Barclay.

Select Resorts is so confident about its two Nevada properties that it is offering a management contract that guarantees a 6% annual return for the first four years, after which buyers can renew, sell or run their properties themselves. It warns that these deals are for investors, not holidaymakers.

This is no stroll in the park (there are no public parks in Vegas anyway). Most foreigners will have to find 20% of the price in cash, and there are stealth taxes that would make Gordon Brown grin. Most painful is the equivalent of council tax (6% of the purchase price every year), which can run into thousands of pounds annually, even in low-tax Nevada.

Yet there are good fundamentals underpinning Sin City. Having shaken off its foolish attempt to rebrand itself as a family oriented desert Disney, Las Vegas is back to its naughty ways with an X-rated Cirque Du Soleil show, although you still have to drive 90 miles away to find a legal brothel.

It is also the fastest-growing big urban centre in the United States. The population has risen from 350,000 two decades ago to about 2m today. Linda Rheinberger, president of the local realtor (estate agent) association, says it will reach 3m within a decade.

By that time, Vegas will be running out of land. “The Strip is our beach front, where all the pricey, blue-chip condos are and will be,” she says. “But the suburbs around them, where the locals actually live, are already up against the park boundaries, so more will be looking to live back in the city if they can afford it.”

However promising the long-term prospects, anyone buying now runs the risk that they are coming in at the top of the market. Property prices in Las Vegas, as in the rest of America, are “resting” after five years of double-digit growth — between the second quarters of 2003 and 2004, for example, the price of single family homes rose 52.4%, according to the National Association of Realtors.

In a sign of the impending slowdown, the total number of houses sold in May was 17% down on a year ago, although the median price rose by 3% to £168,000. Condo sales fell, too, but the median price rose by 8.6%.

There are quality-of-life issues: such unrestrained capitalism is a hangover waiting to happen, which means that property-owners may find themselves paying one-off taxes (called bonds) to pay for a new water or sewage system. And the traffic is already building up.

Rheinberger, who some believe may become Nevada’s governor one day, gives some conservative advice: “Get a good realtor, read the detail, stick in here for five years at least and hold on.” As with everything else in Vegas, it could be a hell of a ride.

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