Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Las Vegas Valley makes top 5 in pending home sales — in a bad way”

A new report found that under Joe Lombardo, pending home sales in Clark County dropped 13.4 percent year over year through the end of March, the third-highest decline in the country. This comes after home sale prices in Clark County broke a record as the median price of a house sold in Southern Nevada soared to $485,000, the highest ever recorded. 

In 2023, Lombardo vetoed SB395 which would have limited large corporations and often out-of-state corporate investors from buying up large amounts of housing stock and price Nevadans out of the market, disproportionately impacting working-class Nevadans and those trying to buy starter homes. Non-coincidentally, recent reporting found that a New York hedge fund is the largest homeowner in Clark County, contributing to hardworking families being priced out of home ownership. 

Lombardo vetoed numerous additional bills that would have uplifted Nevada families and lowered the cost of housing across the state. Now, Lombardo’s vetoes are directly linked to housing costs skyrocketing:

• Lombardo vetoed AB298 which would have prevented skyrocketing rent increases for seniors and Nevadans with disabilities. Now, homelessness has hit its highest peak since the Great Recession.

• A real estate giant collected more than $100 million in “hidden fees” from tenants in Nevada and other states. Then, Lombardo vetoed AB218 and  SB78 from the 2023 legislative session, which would have protected renters from such hidden and predatory fees from landlords.
  
  
• Lombardo vetoed AB340 which would have brought Nevada in line with the rest of the nation by requiring landlords, rather than tenants, to be the first to file in court in summary eviction proceedings. Now, Clark County has one of the highest eviction rates in the country. In the past year alone there have been over 47,000 evictions in Clark County, up from 30,000 evictions in 2023 when there were an average of 70 eviction cases going through eviction court daily in the county.