Las Vegas millennials are priced out of the housing market, report says

Las Vegas has one of the lowest rates of millennial home purchases in the country, according to a new report from Construction Coverage.

Millennials — those born between 1981 and 1996 — in Las Vegas, bought the second lowest rate (48.4 percent) of single-family homes in the country last year out of 55 of the largest metros. The only city that had a lower rate was Tucson, Arizona (45.2 percent). The metro with the highest percentage of millennial home buyers in 2023 was San Jose (73.5 percent).

The study estimates Las Vegas Valley millennials were taking out the highest loan-to-value ratio than any other demographic, and Jonathan Jones, a senior researcher for Construction Coverage and the author for the report, said that while the average millennial is now 35 and in their prime homebuying phase of life, they’re not buying like other generations when they hit their peak earning years.

“Recently, the cost of homeownership has skyrocketed in large part due to an adverse combination of high interest rates and scarce inventory, leaving millennials with a daunting homeownership outlook,” he said.

In the Las Vegas Valley, the median loan amount for millennial homebuyers last year was $385,000, with a median loan-to-value ratio of 86.2 percent, higher than those aged 25 to 34. In terms of rankings by state, Nevada had the fifth lowest rate of millennial home purchases (48.1 percent) while Delaware was last in the country last year with 40.6 percent. Massachusetts led the country in terms of millennial homebuyers by state with 64.2 percent.

“Despite this, and an overall decline in home buying across the country millennials still accounted for the majority of the nation’s home purchase loans in 2023 (56.9 percent). However, rates vary by location,” Jones said. “Researchers ranked metros by the millennial share of conventional home purchase loans originated in 2023.”

Boomers are also reluctant to give up their homes, according to a new study from Clever Real Estate, which estimates more than half of that demographic — born between 1946 and 1964 — do not plan on selling their home before they die, and only 15 percent expect to sell their homes in the next five years. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that boomers own more than half (53.6 percent) of all the homes in America.

Redfin has the median sale price for a single-family home in the Las Vegas Valley at $433,975, a 3.3 percent increase year-over-year. So far this year 816 homes have sold, which is a 7.9 percent decrease from last year and the median time a house is sitting on the market is 39 days, which is a six-day increase from this time last year.

Mortgage rates are slowly starting to fall in anticipation of an expected 25-basis point rate cut from the Federal Reserve on Sept. 18. Redfin has the 30-year-fixed mortgage rate at 6.11 percent, the lowest level since February of 2023 and down from 7.3 percent this time last year.

Las Vegas finds itself in the middle of a housing crisis as a lack of land to develop, coupled with competition from California and corporate investors have driven up home prices close to all-time record highs. Last year the valley had its worst year for real estate sales since 2008.

Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.