The Las Vegas metro area needs to build approximately 5,000 apartment units a year for the foreseeable future to make itself an affordable city for renters, according to a new report.
A recent National Multifamily Housing Council report which looks at the housing gap in major metros in each state also estimates it would take more than a century of building to address the housing and rental shortage in Las Vegas at its current pace. This puts the Las Vegas metro as the 38th most rent burdened metro region in the country. The report also noted that the valley has been one of the fastest growing metro regions over the past decade.
Las Vegas finds itself in the middle of a housing crisis as home prices hover near record highs. Rental rates have come down, however remain elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels while home and apartment construction pipelines have largely stalled for the past few years.
Caitlin Sugrue, the National Multifamily Housing Council’s senior vice president and head of research and innovation, said the situation is dire across the country, as approximately half of renters (22.4 million) in the U.S. are considered “rent burdened” which means they need to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing.
She added two things about the current situation, one, that promoting policies that make it less expensive to build new housing could alleviate the problem, and that approaches like rent control tend to make the problem worse.
“The Las Vegas metro area is estimated to take over a century to address housing affordability if construction only continues at its current pace,” she said. “It will take decades for enough rental housing to exist at price points to make housing affordable to everyone.”
Las Vegas renters contribute approximately $26.9 billion annually to the local economy, supporting 118,100 jobs, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council report. The valley has around 35,000 renters in total, with 197,600 of those being apartment homes.
Rents are dropping across the Las Vegas Valley, according to a new report from Zumper.
One-bedroom apartment rents dropped 18.8 percent in July year over year, the biggest drop in the valley, in Winchester, which includes the north end of the Strip and to the east, according to the apartment rental platform.
The second biggest decline was in North Las Vegas (14.5 percent), followed by Spring Valley in the southwest valley (9.7 percent), Henderson (6.5 percent), Enterprise in the far southwest valley (3.3 percent), Paradise in the southeast valley (1.3 percent) and the city of Las Vegas (0.8 percent), according to Zumper.
Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.
