A dash of positive news for local renters: The price of leasing an apartment in the Las Vegas area has stabilized and even fallen over the past year.
According to a review by Redfin, which offers national real estate listings, the average rent for a valley apartment stood at $1,470 in January, down 1.7 percent from a year previous. Las Vegas rents are below the U.S. average of $1,599.
“New construction that started during the pandemic is still coming online,” Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist, noted about the local market. “But demand for rentals is not as high as it was during the pandemic. That has relieved pressure on rents.”
But a second Redfin economist cautions that headwinds might be building on the horizon. While supply is meeting demand in many places and “keeping rent growth at bay,” Redfin senior economist Sheharyar Bokhari observed, “that may not last long.” He cited increasing demand for apartments because of high mortgage interest rates and increased construction costs stemming from tariffs threatened by the Trump White House on lumber and building materials. “Rents will tick up if demand starts to outpace supply in a meaningful way.”
There are those words again, “supply” and “demand.” Are Democrats in Carson City paying attention? Yes, tariffs could drive up rental prices in Las Vegas. But an equal — and likely greater — threat to the housing market would be the destructive rent control schemes favored by many progressives in the Legislature. Marketed as a push for “affordable” housing, they are anything but.
While rent control provides some benefit to those already leasing, it drives up costs for others by discouraging investment, punishing landlords and triggering shortages.
“Economists rarely agree on much,” Reem Ibrahim of the Foundation for Economic Education wrote in September. “The fact that rent controls have disastrous economic consequences is a unique area of consensus. Rent controls may have well-intentioned aims that are politically desirable —making rents affordable — but they have significant economic consequences.”
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo wisely vetoed a handful of bills in 2023 promoting rent control and other interventions. Yet Democrats vow to revisit such legislation this session. Not only would that be a waste of time given they lack the votes to override another veto, it would continue to promote the fallacy that these proposals will actually help most Nevadans.
Just as rents will “tick up” when demand exceeds supply, the opposite is true: Costs will drop when supply exceeds demand. If Democrats in the Legislature want more “affordable” housing, they would stop pandering with foolish proposals for rent control and focus their energies on policies that encourage developers to build more housing.
