Judge to Issue Decision on Clark County Short-Term Rental Enforcement This Week
LAS VEGAS, NV – The ongoing saga of short-term rental owners versus Clark County continues, as a U.S. District Court judge on Friday stated she would be issuing a decision this week regarding whether or not to allow the municipality to continue to enforce its ordnance governing the rentals while a lawsuit makes its way through the court system.
Clark County is currently being sued by the Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association (GLVSTRA) – which are representing 856 homeowners in the lawsuit – and 15 individual plaintiffs, including Airbnb, after homeowners have been forced to wait years for their rental licenses and lose out on thousands of dollars in potential profits.
The lawsuit claims the county – which GLVSTRA accuses of violating the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth and 14th amendments – botched the process to file for a rental license and punished unlicensed residents who attempted to rent their properties via heavy fines and liens against their properties.
Assembly Bill 363 was originally signed into law by the Nevada legislature in 2021, requiring municipalities to draw up regulations governing the short -term rental industries within their borders.
After approving a short-term rental ordinance in June 2022, Clark County had started a pre-application process for short term rentals in September 2022. 1,169 of the pre-applications they received were deemed eligible and the homeowners that submitted them were subsequently allowed to submit a short-term rental license application.
However, the process of approving these applications has been a slow and arduous one that has found itself ensnared in red tape; as a result, hundreds of applications are still pending years after having been submitted. Meanwhile, state law mandates that homeowners maintain expensive home insurance and pay annual business license fees, even if the residence in question has not yet gotten their license yet.
Nevada District Court Judge Miranda Du had previously denied Clark County’s petition to dismiss GLVSTRA’s lawsuit, and this week she is poised to decide if it will be allowed to continue its enforcement of its short-term rental ordinance while the lawsuit plays out through the courts.
We’ll wait and see what the decision is coming from the judge, but I think we felt good about it,” said Mark Hutchison, GLVSTRA’s lead attorney. “I think that the judge understood the arguments. I think that she really understood the irreparable harm that happens.”
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Christopher Boyle is an expert investigative journalist for SEARCHEN NETWORKS® and reports for independent news and media organizations in the United States. Christopher keeps a keen-eye on what’s happening in the Vegas real estate market on behalf of Shelter Realty Property Management