‘Competition was hot’: Las Vegas Valley home prices nearly double since start of pandemic

Las Vegas Valley home prices have nearly doubled since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, according to a new report.

The COVID-19 pandemic turned the valley into a real estate hot spot, Kara Ng, a senior economist at Zillow said, as the average home price jumped 48 percent from March 2020, when it was at $287,517 to $425,474 as of the end of January of this year, according to the company’s data.

Las Vegas’ home price growth since COVID is higher than the national average of 45.3 percent, according to Zillow.

“Competition was hot in the desert early on in the pandemic,” Ng said. “Las Vegas’ relative affordability and warm sunny weather made it one of the most seller-friendly markets in the nation in 2021 and through the spring of 2022. But as mortgage rates rocketed skyward in 2022, buyers pulled back, curtailing competition and deflating home values. Now home values are growing stably and modestly again, with the power between buyers and sellers more balanced, although the bar for buyers is now far higher than it was five years ago.”

Zillow’s report also has the number of homes in the valley valued at more than $1 million tripling over the same time period (6,143 more), and “shrinkflation” cutting approximately 700 square feet and half a bathroom from million-dollar-homes in the process. The typical home size of a $1 million house in the valley in January 2020 was 4,107 square feet, and that has shrunk to 3,362 as of January of this year.

Ng said this is part of a larger national trend where more than a decade’s worth of average home value growth was packed into the five years starting in March 2020. This has also translated to rental inflation.

“In the time since lockdowns were put in place, rent has risen slightly faster than the national average, though it’s also more affordable for higher-earning Las Vegans,” said Ng.

Rent growth in the valley from the start of the pandemic up until this year is 35.9 percent, which is higher than the overall national average (33.4 percent).

The residential market in the valley also has one of the highest rates of pending deals falling through, according to a recent Redfin study. Las Vegas has the third highest rate in the country behind Atlanta (19.8 percent) and Orlando (18.2 percent). This is also an increase for the valley from January of last year when the rate was 16.4 percent.

Nationally, home values have grown 45.3 percent since the start of the pandemic, which means Las Vegas home prices have grown faster than the national average over that period of time, according to the Zillow report. Miami (61.1 percent) saw the largest increase in average home prices nationally over that time period.

Las Vegas also issued 51,948 new single-family home permits from January 2020 to November 2024, according to Zillow.

Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.