KVIG Informative

Institutional investors now own roughly a quarter of homes across the Las Vegas metro area. The Trump administration has called it a national problem. In Southern Nevada, the buying hasn’t slowed down.

A Wall Street-backed real estate investment trust purchased 151 Las Vegas Valley homes in a single year, with every property destined for the rental market, according to Clark County property records. The homes are spread across the valley, with concentrated purchases in North Las Vegas, Henderson, and the southwest and northwest valley.

The purchase is part of a longer-running pattern. Clark County property records show Wall Street-backed investor Starwood Capital Group sold 264 homes to Dallas-based Invitation Homes, a publicly traded real estate investment trust, for $98 million in a single transaction — potentially the largest one-off residential real estate deal in Clark County history, closed through three separate transactions.

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President Donald Trump issued a policy statement in January calling on Congress to act against large institutional investors, hedge funds and private equity firms buying up residential real estate, following a trend that dates back to the 2008 recession, when Wall Street-backed firms first began acquiring distressed properties in Sun Belt cities and converting them into permanent rental portfolios.

Institutional investors, hedge funds and private equity firms now own roughly a quarter of all homes across the Las Vegas metro area, a concentration that exceeds the national average.

Investor activity in Las Vegas has consistently ranked the metro among the top three markets in the country for institutional home purchases, according to industry analysis of national investor activity.

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Every home converted to permanent institutional ownership is a home removed from the pool available to individual buyers, compounding the pressure already facing a valley where Las Vegas Realtors reported a record median single-family home price of $490,000 in June.

A presidential policy statement asking Congress to act hasn’t translated into legislation. Until it does, Wall Street-backed firms are still closing deals on Las Vegas Valley homes the same way they have since 2008 — buying them, and keeping them, permanently off the market for anyone who isn’t paying rent to do so.