Ground Broken on Unique Apartment Complex for Visually Impaired Las Vegas Residents

LAS VEGAS, NV – Ground was broken last Friday on a unique and pioneering affordable living apartment complex in downtown Las Vegas that caters exclusively to the needs of blind and visually impaired residents.

Dubbed “Visions Park,” the $30 million project will be located next door to the Blind Center of Nevada campus at 950 Visions Park Lane, and will feature numerous amenities to help sight-challenged tenants retain some degree of independence, including flooring that makes different kinds of noises when you walk on it in order to help blind individuals navigate, as well as special types of lighting to assist those who are visually impaired.

In order to bring this project to life, the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Clark County, and even the state of Nevada have pooled their collective resources in order to create an apartment complex that is accessible to those who rely on the resources of the Blind Center of Nevada.

In addition, the project will aid in reducing travel time and costs getting to and from the Blind Center, as currently some – such as Havander Davis, a visually impaired man who has attended the campus since he was a child – report a commute of anywhere from one to two hours every day.

This is something that blind people or even people with disabilities need, moving into a place that is already going to be accessible is going to be amazing,” Davis said.

Henderson City Councilwoman Carrie Cox, who helped make the project a reality, said that the challenges of visual impairment have affected members of her own family, making this cause a deeply personal one.

It takes a toll. I’ve had a personal experience with my own mother and seeing her sight fail her towards the end of her life,” Cox said, noting that her mother’s situation improved when she began attending the Blind Center. “And to know the difference that that made for her, there was really not a lot of options. So, this is amazing to me that the Blind Center has taken this leap to bring us all together and to make something happen for those that are visually impaired.”

Visions Park is slated to open in the beginning of 2026; there are already 300 people on the waiting list.

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – As per a newly-released report by a construction industry analytics firm, Millennials are slowly being priced out of the Las Vegas housing market, with the group being ranked as one of the lowest in terms of home buying not only in Southern Nevada, but nationwide as well.

Construction Coverage notes that out of the 55 largest metropolitan area they examined, Millennials – defined as the generation born between 1981 and 1996 – were responsible for buying just 48.4 percent of the single-family homes in Las Vegas in 2023. Tucson, Arizona was the only city ranking lower than Vegas in this regard at 45.2 percent, while San Jose, California was the city with the highest percentage of Millennials home-buyers at 73.2 percent.

According to the author of Construction Coverage’s report, Jonathan Jones – a senior researcher for the firm – Millennials residing in the Las Vegas Valley were taking out mortgages in 2023 with the highest loan-to-value ratios of any age group. In addition, given the fact that an individual’s average peak earning and home-buying years are their mid-30s – the current age of the average Millennial – they are not purchasing residences at nearly the same level when compared to other demographics.

Recently, the cost of homeownership has skyrocketed in large part due to an adverse combination of high interest rates and scarce inventory, leaving millennials with a daunting homeownership outlook,” Jones said.

The median loan amount for Millennials purchasing a home in the Las Vegas Valley in 2023 was $385,000; those loans had an 86.2 percent median loan-to-value ratio, which is higher than for younger demographics. When looking at the overall rankings state-by-state, Nevada had the fifth-lowest Millennial home buying rate at 48.1 percent – Delaware was the lowest at 40.6 percent – whereas Massachusetts had the most at 64.2 percent.

Despite this, and an overall decline in home buying across the country, millennials still accounted for the majority of the nation’s home purchase loans in 2023 (56.9 percent),” Jones said. “However, rates vary by location. Researchers ranked metros by the millennial share of conventional home purchase loans originated in 2023.”

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – After a number of borrowing rate increases over the past several years instituted in an attempt to combat skyrocketing inflation and prevent a potential national recession, the Federal Reserve is finally expected to implement their first rate cut in four years on Wednesday, with experts anticipating that the move will begin to lower the historically-high interest on mortgage loans.

Other decreases due to Wednesday’s expected cut are to be seen with auto loans, credit cards – the nation debt for which recently hit $1.1 trillion, the highest level in U.S. history – and business loans.

The rate cut, which is anticipated to be by either a quarter point or half percentage point – and more cuts are currently in the pipeline – should make it easier for individuals and families who have been holding off on buying a home due to high borrowing costs to finally land a mortgage that they can afford. The last time the Fed instituted a cut – way back in 2020 – interest rates were at 5.25 to 5.5 percent, which at the time was the highest point they had reached in 23 years.

In contrast, over the past four years interest rates for mortgages peaked at a whopping 7.8 percent in October 2023; as of September 2024, rates have dropped to approximately 6.2 percent.

Experts say that, with the news of the Fed’s anticipated rate cut announcement on Wednesday, now is a good time for people to begin taking a close look at their financial situation, as some interest rates will decrease automatically, creating some measure of relief for cash-strapped citizens.

While the federal funds rate does not directly set mortgage rates, experts note that the two tend to go hand-in-hand and as continued cuts come to pass, borrowing rates should continue to fall. As that occurs, consumers are encouraged to consider refinancing existing home mortgages and those shopping for a home should step up their efforts amid the lowered borrowing costs.

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – For decades, the resort industry has dominated the Las Vegas economy, with glitzy and glamorous hotels providing convenient opportunities for visitors and tourists to enjoy the many casinos and entertainment options lining the famed Las Vegas Strip and its surrounding areas. However, the advent of short-term rentals – via services such as Airbnb and Vrbo – have had an impact on the Vegas resort industry, but has it been a positive or negative one?

According to University of Nevada, Las Vegas College of Hospitality professor Amanda Belarmino, the relationship between the resort and short-term rental industries in Vegas is far from adversarial; in fact, she noted, the two actually compliment each other quite well, as they each attract very different customer bases.

“(Short-term rentals) serve underserved markets. Families are not well served by traditional hotels or by traditional hotel casinos in Las Vegas,” she said. “Many of [them] are people that are relocating here. That’s not a person that you necessarily want in a casino hotel because they’re trying to go to work and not going to be gambling, or eating every meal at your restaurant.”

In addition, Belarmino said that the Vegas economy strongly benefits from having short-term rentals operating within its borders, and while they typically are more expensive than a hotel stay, they normally more than make up for it in terms of privacy, accessibility, and the number of amenities on offer.

But if there is any one disadvantage that comes with short-term rentals, Belarmino said, it’s the high number of investors who are getting in on the action who are serving to drive up the prices of homes in the Southern Nevada region.

I think the bigger impact we see is the perceived impact on housing prices, because investors are purchasing the homes instead,” she said. “But we see that in every market that Airbnb goes into.”

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – The cost of rent continues to be a hot button topic in Southern Nevada, with the dough tenants are handing over to their landlords each and every month increasing in some parts of the Las Vegas Valley while decreasing in others. But for renters looking to save a few bucks and find a slightly more affordable place to call home, a new study by digital marketplace Zumper sheds some light on where in Vegas they should be looking.

Out of the 100 cities in the nation that Zumper examined as a part of their report, Las Vegas came in at the 67th most expensive in terms of rent, solidifying its status as one of the more affordable places in the United States to live these days. In August, the median price of a one-bedroom apartment in Vegas was $1,210, a 0.8 percent month-over-month increase; in addition, the median price of a two-bedroom apartment in August was $1,500, remaining the same exact cost as the month before.

The Zumper report examined several areas in the Valley with very heavy rental activity – Henderson, Spring Valley, Winchester, Paradise, and the City of Las Vegas – with Paradise having the most expensive one-bedroom median rent at $1,640, followed by Henderson at $1,460, Winchester with 1,220 and the City of Las Vegas at $1,210.

In addition to having the highest median rent, Paradise also had the largest year-over-year rent increase at 9.3 percent, followed by Spring Valley with 7.5 percent. However, some other areas in the Valley examined in the report saw decreases in rent when compared to last year, with Winchester going down 10.9 percent and the City of Las Vegas dropping 3.2 percent.

In addition, the median rent in the City of Las Vegas is approximately $300 lower than the national average, according to the Zumper report.

In contrast, New York has the dubious distinction of having the highest rental prices in the entire United States, with the median price for a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan coming in at a whopping $4,500.

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – While multi-family complexes in Las Vegas continue to be bought and sold on a regular basis, some owners of these properties are beginning to sweat as commercial real estate analysts indicate approximately 20 percent of all apartment building loans in the nation are in danger of defaulting due to pricey pandemic-era loans soon coming due.

The situation could potentially cause a dramatic increase in the number of rental properties being foreclosed upon and being sold off, experts say.

The cause, experts say, is due to variable rate financing offered during COVID-19 that is – several years after their respective loans were taken out – having a detrimental effect upon apartment complex owners recently, both in Las Vegas and across the country; currently, as per Colliers International, there are approximately 232,751 multifamily units in the Las Vegas Valley alone.

In 2021, Vegas saw $4.8 billion in sales of 80 multifamily transactions of buildings with 100 or more units. According to Executive Vice President for Multifamily Investment Sales with Colliers International in Las Vegas, Jeffrey Swinger, the exceedingly low-interest rate financing offered during the height of the pandemic is causing potential major financial headaches for property owners in the here and now.

What this really boils down to is interest rates and COVID,” he said. “Particularly starting in 2021, a lot of the lenders (within the multifamily market) because interest rates were zero, were able to offer these short-term floating rate loans, and they were typically three years. If you fast forward to today, a lot of these loans are coming due at today’s interest rates and it’s crushing them.”

Reports indicate that the 176-unit Tides at Walnut Park complex in Las Vegas – owned by ides Equities, which has 23 properties in the Las Vegas Valley – was recently foreclosed upon due to this very same reason.

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – According to a new study released by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, Clark County, Nevada is among the municipalities with the highest rates of tenant eviction in the nation.

However, Princeton’s study should not be considered 100 percent definitive, said Eviction Lab research specialist Grace Hartley, as its parameters are narrower than more comprehensive efforts would be, with researchers having only tracked 34 major metro areas throughout the country.

But regardless, Clark County ranked among the highest in the areas tracked, although that ranking is not per capita, Hartley noted.

The population of (Clark County) has the seventh-highest rate in terms of pure filing counts,” she said. “And that’s more than a lot of the states we track.”

There have been 190,133 eviction filings in Clark County since March 2020, which represents a 21 percent jump from the amount seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic; in 2024 alone, there have been 51,782 filings so far – an increase of 42 percent from pre-pandemic levels – and 4,041 filings in August, a 25 percent increase.

Currently, according to the Eviction Lab, there are approximately 370,204 households being rented in Clark County, with the average monthly rent coming in at about $1,325.

Among the circumstances that attribute to those higher degree of eviction numbers, according to Princeton, is the fact that the process of filing for evictions in Clark County tend to be cheaper and faster than it is in any of the other cities tracked in their study; tenants are only required to be given seven days’ notice by their landlord, and the filing fee with the court is only $71.

In addition, in June 2023, a bill that would have stopped evictions for up to 60 days for renters with pending applications for rental insistence – Senate Bill 335 – was vetoed by Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, which has also served to increase eviction levels in the state, Princeton says.

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – According to new history data released by industry group Las Vegas Realtors (LVR) illustrating how inflation has made home ownership more costly in recent years, in 1997 the median price of an existing single-family home in Southern Nevada was $124,000, which would be the equivalent of $246,829 in today’s current market.

However, clearly showing how times have changed, the actual median price of a single-family home in Las Vegas as of July 2024 was, in reality, $480,000, which represents a 6.7 percent jump from July 2023, when that amount was $450,000.

July 2024’s median home price also shows that home values in the Las Vegas Valley are slowly but surely creeping back up to potentially meet – and perhaps even exceed – the all-time record of $482,000, which was originally set in May 2022.

Other tidbits from the data released by LVR provide additional insight into how home values have appreciated with greater and greater speed in Southern Nevada over the years- the median price in July 2000 was $140,000, but by April 2004, it had increased to $252,500.

And despite the Great Recession in the mid-2000s essentially knocking home prices in Vegas back to levels not seen since before 2001, LVR’s historical data indicates that, since 2000, home prices in the region overall have more than tripled.

One of the main factors contributing to the rapidly rising value of homes in Vegas is the fact that there is a limit currently to how much public land there is for developers to construct upon.

In fact, research firm Applied Analysis notes that in as soon as eight years, the valley could exhaust its supply unless the Bureau of Land Management – a federal agency that controls much of the land in Nevada – speeds up the process of releasing more land for housing development, a process that they have been heavily criticized for due to their lack of urgency in doing so thus far.

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – The presidential campaign of Kamala Harris released an ad this week detailing her plan to address the housing shortage and lower home costs in the United States, should she be successful in her bid to be elected to the White House in November.

The advertisement – targeting residents in swing states including Nevada, where the median home price as of July was $480,000 – first details the struggle of the family of the Democratic nominee for president to save and purchase their first home when she was a child.

From there, the advertisement then proceeds to recap the plan that Harris revealed last week in North Carolina that calls for a $40 billion housing initiative fund for local municipalities throughout the country, the construction of three million new homes, and tax incentives for residential developers that target first-time homebuyers.

In addition, Harris’ plan also aims to provide “first-generation” homebuyers – defied as “any individual whose parents or guardians never owned a home during the homebuyer’s lifetime and whose spouse has not owned a home in the last three years” – with down payment assistance in the amount of $25,000, as well as a $10,000 tax credit for first-time buyers.

The Research Director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Lied Center for Real Estate, Nicholas Irwin, noted that Harris’ proposal, if implemented properly, could be effective in addressing the housing crisis that the state is currently experiencing, which currently has the sixth-lowest homeownership rate and 11th-highest median rent in the country.

I’m a big, big proponent, like most people in the real estate space, of building more housing as best we can,” he said, while pointing out the fact that about 80 percent of the land in Nevada is federally-owned. “We don’t have the option to just go build. Federal agencies are not disposing of [it’s land] perhaps as quickly as we would like, especially when it comes to addressing our affordable housing needs.”

However, the Executive Director of the Nevada Housing Coalition, Maurice Page – while also acknowledging the potential in Harris’ plan – expressed worry that it could ultimately inflate housing costs down the line.

These will definitely create some amount of inflationary pressure, because you’re putting more money in a certain group’s hands, the first-time homeowners,” he said. “But if you pair a demand-side policy like that with supply-side, getting more houses online, hopefully it will dampen that effect.”

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – According to a new report released by residential real estate brokerage and mortgage origination services company Redfin, the Las Vegas Valley has seen the number of homes purchased by investors increase year-over-year by the largest margin in the entire nation.

In the second quarter of 2024, purchases made by investors – in this case, defied by Redfin as a “company” – jumped a whopping 27 percent when compared to the same period of time one year prior, the most out of any area in the United States. These numbers tied the valley with only one other city in the country- San Jose, California, which saw the same exact percentage of homes gobbled up by investors.

About 14 percent of all residential single-family homes in the Las Vegas Valley are now owned by investors representing corporations, according to a study released by the Lied Center for Real Estate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). These numbers go up even further when North Las Vegas is focused upon, with an astonishing 25 percent of all homes there currently in the hands of out-of-state – and typically Wall Street-backed – investors.

Chen Zhao, a lead Redfin Economics Research analyst, noted that the Las Vegas Valley has a wide variety of factors that make it uniquely attractive to companies seeking to sink their investment dollars into real estate, buying large numbers of homes to then rent out to both locals and tourists.

Investors could be attracted to Las Vegas because rents there are increasing more than the national median,” she said. “In addition, Las Vegas is a tourist destination so short-term rentals are another reason for investors to want to buy there.”

In addition, in Q2 2024 the city of Las Vegas itself has the largest number of homes bought by investors – 22.3 percent – with only Miami, Florida ranking higher in that regard, as 28.5 percent.

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – Following the end of pandemic-era housing protections, the number of evictions soared nationally and many tenants who failed to pay their rent during COVID-19 – either because of financial issues brought about by the virus, or because they were simply taking advantage of the law for their own gain – found themselves out on the street.

In fact, in 2023, evictions in some U.S. cities increased to over 50 percent higher than they were prior to the pandemic, according to a recent study by the University of Michigan.

While this was a blessing for many cash-strapped landlords who suffered throughout the pandemic, it has led to a new series of issues that many are being forced to face: a growing number of states that are allowing tenants to seal their eviction records in some – and, at times, all – cases, making it difficult for the next individual they rent from to tell if they will be a reliable occupant or not.

The increasing number of states that are passing legislation in favor of allowing tenants to conceal their previous eviction status argue that – regardless of the reason – having an eviction on your record can have a negative impact on acquiring new housing and can contribute to homelessness.

However, many landlords – especially small mom-and-pop property owners with limited means – argue that it is unfair to conceal eviction records from them, given the fact that many were already forced to provide free shelter for an extended time during the pandemic, much to their financial detriment. Not knowing if a new tenant is reliable or not could potentially put them in additional jeopardy, they say.

That being said, can tenants have their eviction records sealed in the state of Nevada? To answer that question, we turn to Nevada Legal Services (NLS), which lays out the details.

Normally, evictions are considered public records, and in the case of Nevada, that is no different. However, there are instances where – due to the passage of Nevada Revised Statutes (NRS) 40.2545 in 2022 – courts are allowed to seal a summary eviction case in certain circumstances; sometimes automatically, sometimes when petitioned by a tenant or landlord.

According to NLS, an eviction in the state of Nevada is sealed automatically:

• If the eviction is dismissed.
• 10 judicial days after eviction denied – tenant prevails at court hearing.
• The landlord seeks to rescind the eviction.
• 31 days after Tenant files the Tenant’s Affidavit if Landlord does not file.

In other instances, a tenant must take action to have an eviction sealed; a Stipulation to Seal can be filed if a landlord agrees to seal the eviction, and both parties must sign the form. But if the landlord does not agree to seal the eviction, the tenant must file a motion on their own, which may or may not be granted, depending on the circumstances of the eviction; essentially, they must prove to the court “the interest of justice in sealing the eviction is not outweighed by the public’s interest in access to court records.”

So, in closing, Nevada currently does not have a blanket seal on eviction records; they can be automatically sealed in certain instances, but otherwise tenants are required to petition the court to do so, and they must provide proof to back that petition up or it will not be granted.

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.

LAS VEGAS, NV – After an extended period of time that has left many Las Vegas landlords grumbling and downright angry over the prospects of missed income, unincorporated Clark County has finally begun to issue short-term rental licenses…well, three of them anyway, amid a massive backlog of applicants hundreds deep who have been waiting for over a year-and-a-half to begin legally renting their properties.

The road to this point in time began in 2021, when Nevada passed legislation mandating that cities and counties within the state create regulations and a process for granting licenses for short-term rentals; Clark County would create their own ordinance in Summer 2022, but from there, further progress has been slow.

Cities such as Las Vegas and Henderson have already been issuing licenses and regulating short-term rentals within their confines for some time now, but Clark County only truly got the ball rolling in March of 2023, at which time they held a lottery where the names of over 1,300 prospective applicants were drawn to be reviewed and, if they met the criteria, eventually granted licenses.

However, the process of reviewing and issuing said licenses has turned out to be a long and drawn-out affair, with Clark County officials extending deadlines several times while reviewing qualified applications and allowing them to move forward in the process.

Currently, the applications of over 700 homeowners are still mired somewhere in the licensing process, county officials say.

In the meantime, homeowners have expressed extreme frustration with what they view as the county dragging their feet in granting their licenses, and lament the missed profits they could have amassed if they were able to take advantage of recent large-scale sporting events, such as the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix that took place late last year, which attracted a great many tourists to the city.

One of the homeowners whose license was granted this week was originally drawn as “number 10” in the 2023 lottery, leaving those who drew hundreds higher wondering how much longer they may be forced to wait before they can begin legally renting out their properties.

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.