Here’s how many homes investors have bought in Las Vegas

Investors bought nearly a half-million homes in the Las Vegas Valley since 2009, according to a new report.

Investors purchased approximately 492,634 homes since the start of the Great Recession and made up 23 percent of all home purchases in the valley last year, according to the latest report from UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate, which uses data from Redfin

Back in 2009 after the economic downturn, investors only owned approximately 1,157 homes in Las Vegas, and Nicholas Irwin, one of the authors of the report, said it’s important to note there is no data on how many homes investors still own as they may have sold some of them over the years or swapped them between companies. But the data is still quite staggering regardless, he said.

“The scale of investor activity in the housing market has raised growing concerns about both affordability and the availability of homes within the single-family residential sector nationwide,” he said. “While investor ownership can expand the stock of single-family residential rental options, it simultaneously reduces the number of homes available for owner occupancy, further constraining supply in that segment.”

Redfin and UNLV define investors as those who buy homes through companies or trusts.

Irwin said between 2009 and 2024 investors have bought homes in the valley in two distinct waves.

“Over this 15-year period, investors accounted for between 14 and 29 percent of all home sales each year,” he said. “In total, nearly 100,000 homes were purchased by investors meaning roughly one in every five homes sold during this period went to an investor. Investor activity surged during the post COVID years (2021–2022), reaching levels higher than those observed in the aftermath of the 2000s housing crash.”

Investor purchases of homes in the Las Vegas Valley peaked in 2021 when they made up 27 percent (14,298 properties) of all purchases locally, and then 29 percent in 2022 (11,207). There was also a significant spike in 2012 when 3,714 homes were purchased by investors which made up 23 percent of all the sales that year, and then 6,670 investor purchases in 2013 for 25 percent of all the homes bought.

Irwin also noted that compared to other cities in the West, Las Vegas has consistently ranked among the top places for investors to buy residential properties.

“Las Vegas ranks near the top in investor purchasing share each year. Alongside Phoenix, it recorded the highest single-year level, 29 percent of all home purchases in 2022,” he said. “Although investor activity in Las Vegas has moderated in recent years while remaining elevated elsewhere, its average share over the 2019-2024 period remains several percentage points higher than other western metros and well above the national average.”

The two largest homeowners in Clark County are most likely New York’s Progress Residential and Dallas-based Invitation Homes. Both companies are publicly traded and backed by Wall Street investors and private equity.

A 2023 study done by the Lied Center for Real Estate estimated that investors (anyone who has bought more than five homes in the past 10 years) owned approximately 15 percent of all of the single-family homes in Clark County and upwards of 25 percent in North Las Vegas, a number that has been rising steadily since the Great Recession.

Where is the market headed?

Redfin’s second quarter report on investors shows that investor purchases of homes is clearly not as lucrative now as it was a few years ago. The average investor earned approximately $195,934 in capital gains via selling a home in the second quarter of this year, which is up 1.7 percent year over year. However in comparison, at the start of 2021, investor capital gains were up more than 30 percent year over year as investors “bought up properties and quickly sold them for a big profit during a time of booming homebuying demand,” said the Redfin report.

The share of investors who sold homes at a loss rose slightly in the second quarter of this year, and Redfin senior economist Sheharyar Bokhari said the math is clearly not adding up like it used to.

“For real estate investors, the numbers just don’t pencil out the way they did a few years ago, whether they’re looking to flip a home or rent it out,” he said. “It costs a lot to buy a home, and potential returns are simultaneously softening. That doesn’t mean investors are disappearing, they’re still buying nearly one in five homes in the country, but they’re being choosier about their home purchases, just like individual homebuyers.”

Tushar Garg, CEO and co-founder of FlyHomes, a mortgage lender that helps regular people become all cash buyers for properties in part to compete with investors, said his company and others like it are a response to a “broken housing market” and the “commodification” of America residential real estate by Wall Street and private equity. Garg was recently in Las Vegas for the Mortgage Bankers Association convention and said right now buying homes is not a level playing field at all.

“The market is becoming more commodified,” he said, noting that homeownership is still the best way for families to create generational wealth and move up the economic ladder. “For most people buying a home is the biggest and most important transaction of their life and allows them to start building that wealth.”

Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.