Report: Las Vegas one of the least affordable housing markets in the country

Las Vegas is the 11th least affordable city in the nation as only 18 percent of the homes on the market for sale are deemed affordable for a four-person household making the annual median income, according to the Urban Land Institute’s 2024 Home Attainability Index. The median income in Las Vegas is $70,723, according to the census.

This puts Las Vegas within the same territory as cities such as San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles, California; Honolulu and Stockton, California, which round out the top five least affordable cities in the country.

Las Vegas finds itself marred in a housing crisis as the valley’s housing market has become unaffordable for the majority of residents. A number of factors have played into this including a lack of land to develop, high mortgage rates and home prices reaching close to record highs again.

Adam Ducker, chief executive officer for the RCLCO and one of the authors of the report, said there are multiple factors to take into consideration when looking at Las Vegas housing market, but there is one important aspect that should be at the top: under production of homes.

“We’re just not producing enough housing for the growth that we’re experiencing, which is true in most markets but particularly in high-growth markets including Las Vegas,” he said.

The ULI report also estimates that it would take a household with the average median income approximately 37.4 years to save up for a down payment on a house in the area.

Shortage of affordable housing

Another big issue compounding this affordability crisis is a shortage of affordable housing in the valley.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Nevada is short approximately 78,218 renter households for extremely low income people, a number that has been growing steadily since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rosemarie Hepner, vice president of the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing and another author of the report, said getting money for affordable housing projects across the country is a “hodgepodge of funding” from federal, state and local levels which all have requirements, red tape and bureaucratic hurdles.

On top of this, said Hepner, are local residents who do not want affordable housing projects built in their neck of the woods.

“Everything has gotten more expensive, and where you have those magnet cities and higher attraction points, the land is really expensive but you also have highly energized communities that don’t want them to change,” she said. “There’s so many communities that are still not doing anything about it because they don’t want to see their communities change.”

Real estate analysts are somewhat optimistic a Trump administration will usher in a wave of deregulation that will kickstart more homebuilding. In a new report, Redfin expects more homes to be built across American next year than were built this year.

“Though it will take a few years for the increase in homebuilding to make buying a house significantly more affordable,” reads the report. “The Republican sweep of the White House, Senate and House has improved builder confidence by bringing renewed optimism that regulatory burdens may ease. Builders will also bank on the fact that the mortgage-rate lock-in effect will put a lid on the amount of existing inventory competing with new builds.”

Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.