Investors and Housing Markets in Las Vegas: A Case Study

W13-10: The Las Vegas case study focused on four zip codes in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Area representing low to middle-level housing market subareas (the lower three quintiles of the market based on price) within the larger region containing roughly 12% of the region’s population. The analysis looked at the universe of single-family and condominium sales for calendar year 2011 by census tract for these four zip codes, looking at the distribution of owner-occupant vs. non-owner-occupant (NOO) buyers by location and price range of houses bought by each, and the nature of the transaction, such as REO, short sale or conventional sale, as well as the geographic distribution of non-owner-occupant buyers by address, and whether there were patterns of concentration among non-owned occupant buyers. Using other property data sources, activity patterns of selected buyers in the larger market area were studied, while all of his information was supplemented with a series of interviews with informants in Las Vegas to provide a greater qualitative understanding of the dynamics of the real estate investor sector.