The 2026 Las Vegas Housing Outlook is held at the Las Vegas Realtors facility on South Rainbow Boulevard Thursday, April 23, 2026. The annual event was sponsored by Summerlin and presented by Home Builders Research.

For decades, Las Vegas has been one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. But wages in a state known for its hospitality industry aren’t rising fast enough to keep up with soaring home prices. Facing a shortage of 200,000 housing units, the state legislature has been looking for solutions. But as Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd reports, it won’t be easy to rescue Nevada’s reputation as an affordable place to live.

Institutional investors, Wall Street backed-hedged funds and corporate owners have long played a significant role in Las Vegas’ housing market as a recent report from UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate — which pulled its data from Redfin — estimates investors have purchased more than 99,000 homes since the start of the Great Recession.

The Lied Center for Real Estate at the University of Nevada Las Vegas estimated investors owned roughly 15% of homes in the City of Las Vegas—a percentage expected to grow in Nevada and across the country.

Last year, personal-finance site Bankrate found that most homes on the market in Las Vegas were out of reach to the typical buyer, and UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate reported that Las Vegas’ housing market was “largely unaffordable for much of the local population.”

UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate found that from 2009 to 2024, investors purchased roughly 1 in 5 homes sold in Las Vegas.

The latest annual economic benefit projection is larger than the $1 billion figure that Gov. Wes Moore and other officials shared shortly after Sphere announced its plans to expand. But economists say economic impact estimates are often inflated.

We’re still seeing long-term population momentum in Clark County. UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research estimates Clark County’s population was 2.42 million in 2024, and forecasts population growth of about 1.7 percent in both 2025 and 2026.

Overall, UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate reported in September that Las Vegas’ housing market was “largely unaffordable for much of the local population.”

The study, conducted by UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate, used artificial intelligence to help collect the data in the county, which is home to Reno and Sparks, and broke down investors into five separate groups.

If you’re looking to buy or sell a home right now, you know that the housing market is in a weird place. In Las Vegas, the median price for an existing home in December was $470,000. That’s down from the record high of almost $489,000 a month earlier. However, it's considerably more than what a house cost before the pandemic – about $150,000 more.

President Donald Trump’s executive order to curb corporate homeownership is being implemented starting this month, and FOX5 is examining the potential impact on Nevada and next steps from state lawmakers.