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How Big Investors Are Impacting The Valley's Housing Market

A holdover from the recession could be contributing to Southern Nevada's growing housing crunch.  

During the recession, big investment companies went into some of the cities with the most distressed properties like Las Vegas and bought hundreds of homes. Most people thought the corporations would but the companies back on the market when housing prices recovered, but that is not what happened. They're holding to the properties and renting them out.

Kimberly Adams, a reporter for MarketPlace, which airs daily on Nevada Public Radio, visited Las Vegas recently to investigate.

Adams told KNPR's State of Nevada that many real estate agents agree that investors helped put a "floor on falling housing prices" during the recession. However, now that the city is recovering it is having a negative impact.

“It contributes to the shortage of housing supply as well as, according to some, helps push up rents even higher because there is more competition for rental homes,” she said.

Corporate ownership is still a tiny fraction of the single family home rental market, most of those homes are owned by an individual or a small company that owns a few. But it is having an impact on housing.  

Adams also said that many of these corporations are looking at expanding and building homes to rent - not to sell. That could mean more homebuilders will decide to build homes for these corporations instead of filling the affordable housing needs of the Las Vegas Valley. 

Kimberly Adams, reporter, MarketPlace

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Joe Schoenmann joined Nevada Public Radio in 2014. He works with a talented team of producers at State of Nevada who explore the casino industry, sports, politics, public health and everything in between.