In dwindling housing market, even the rich are leaving Las Vegas

When Nicholas Cage's Las Vegas estate went into foreclosure last year it seemed to be just another page in his tumultuous financial troubles. What turned up was an even deeper trend of millionaires moving away from the famous desert city, according to Bloomberg.

Las Vegas has the highest foreclosure filings rate in the country, among large cities, and that epidemic has spread to the city's wealthier homeowners, according to the news source. The housing crisis has turned the once affluent market upside down.

The city's population has plummeted by 16,000 from its high of 1.97 million in 2008, according to the news source. People are relocating at record levels. Home values have fallen 58 percent from their 2006 high and are the lowest since 1999. According to Clark County property records, 30 homes with loans exceeding $1 million were repossessed in the first quarter.

"I gave up on Vegas. There's no opportunity for anything in this town that I can see," Eric Petersen, who owned Consumer Credit Services, a Las Vegas-based catalog-merchandising company that closed in 2008, told the news source.

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