As home prices in Las Vegas outpace the rest of the country, Joe Lombardo ordered Republican legislators to block a bill that would limit large corporations and corporate investors from buying more than 100 homes a year and prevent them from inflating housing costs and pricing working families out of the market. Reporting from the Las Vegas Review-Journal found that on Lombardo’s watch, a New York hedge fund is the largest homeowner in Clark County and is targeting starter homes and low-income communities, pricing hardworking families out of home ownership.
Last legislative session, Lombardo vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have limited the amount of housing stock large corporations could buy up and nearly two years later has not offered a plan to hold corporate investors accountable and ensure that everyday folks are able to afford a home.
Read more below:
Las Vegas Review-Journal: Not dead yet? Future of corporate homeownership bill up in the air
- A bill to significantly regulate corporate home buying in Nevada failed an initial vote in the Nevada Senate on Tuesday, but Democratic leadership signaled they may still consider the policy in the waning days of the session.
- Senate Bill 391 proposes allowing corporate investors to buy no more than 100 residential units in a calendar year. It was one of the key housing proposals brought by legislativeDemocrats this year — and an issue that Gov. Joe Lombardo also highlighted in his State of the State address in January.
- The governor’s office called on the Republican caucus to not support the bill, oneRepublican said before Tuesday’s floor vote. Ira Hansen, R-Sparks, said he supported the concepts presented in the bill and decried how hedge funds push would-be buyers back into the rental market.
- “If me and a couple of ordinary people, people of ordinary finances, were to be bidding against Elon Musk, who is going to win that bidding war?” Hansen said during the debate.
- The bill required a two-thirds vote to pass because it imposed fees. It failed along partylines during a floor vote in the Senate, 13-8, and was declared dead. But moments later,Senate Democratic leaders called to rescind the vote and put it on the chief clerk’s desk – effectively a purgatory for legislation. It could be called back for another vote or amended in the last six days of the legislative session.
- Bill sponsor Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, expressed frustration before the vote about the governor’s influence on the bill. She refuted the opposition’s argument that SB 391 gives the Legislature too much authority in policing the housing market.
- “We as a state need to move against this particular power that is turning over homes to corporate investors and not giving our own people the right to go and bid against an investor and own the property,” Neal said before the vote. “It is perfectly within the purview of the Legislature to move within this realm of the policing powers and to actually go in and regulate while that housing crisis is going on.”
The Nevada Current: At Lombardo’s request, Hansen ‘reluctantly’ blocks bill to rein in runaway corporate home ownership
Key points:
- Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo asked the Republican legislative caucus to block a bill that attempts to limit cash-rich corporate investors from purchasing large swaths of housing in Nevada, Republican state Sen. Ira Hansen said on Tuesday.
- State lawmakers passed several bills on Friday that seek to bolster tenant protections and make changes to the eviction system, many of which were based on similar proposals that were vetoed by Lombardo in 2023.
- Democratic state Sen. Dina Neal also revived 2023 efforts vetoed by Lombardo to rein in corporate landlords. Senate Bill 391, which failed to pass Tuesday, proposed restricting corporate investors from purchasing more than 100 units per year.
- Unlike the other housing bills that passed this session, SB 391 needed a two-thirds majority to pass since it imposed fees. A yes vote from Hansen, who had supported the bill, would have given the legislation the 14 to 7 vote needed to meet the two-thirds threshold. Instead, the vote was 13 to 8.
- “For the first time this session, I have actually been asked by the executive branch to support a caucus ‘no’ position, which I have agreed to do,” Hansen said in a floor speech Tuesday, adding he was doing so “very reluctantly.”
- In an email to Nevada Current, Lombardo’s press secretary Josh Meny said the governor was asked for input on SB 391 and “voiced technical concerns with the initial draft of the legislation.”
- The efforts to block legislation is disappointing, especially since Nevada is in the middle of a housing crisis, Neal said.
- “Going into today’s vote, this bill had bipartisan support because preventing corporations from robbing Nevadans of the American Dream should be a bipartisan issue,” she said in a statement. “The only reason it didn’t pass is because of Gov. Lombardo’s intervention. Senate Democrats will continue to fight to enact this bill and protect Nevadans from predatory out-of-state investors.”
- Hansen voted in support of Neal’s 2023 bill. On Tuesday, he reaffirmed he still “supported the concept” of the bill to do more to crack down on out-of-state investors, adding he was “a little frustrated” that he had to vote against the legislation.
- He warned that private investors are buying up the housing in Nevada, adding that “in Clark County 15% of all the residential housing is owned by hedge funds.”
- The estimate comes from Lied Center for Real Estate at the University of Nevada Las Vegas that found investors own roughly 15% of homes in the City of Las Vegas.
- Las Vegas Review Journal has reported that corporate investors purchased 264 homes in a single day for $98 million.
- Hansen said it creates a system where regular Nevadans are unable to purchase a home when up against out-of-state private equity investors.
- “If me or a couple other ordinary people were bidding against Elon Musk, who is going to win that bidding war?” Hansen asked.
- Hansen said he hoped that “some of the better elements” of Neal’s bill “could somehow be incorporated in the last waning days of the session.”
- The bill also proposed exempting projects from paying prevailing wages to construction workers that state law typically requires of publicly financed projects.
- In addition to reducing the dollar amount, the legislation removed language around the prevailing wage.
- “Any plans to address our state’s housing crisis, including the Governor’s own housing bill, mean nothing if there are no guarantees or protections that support access or attainment,” said Ben Iness, coalition manager of the Nevada Housing Justice Alliance. “Until the state of housing is taken seriously, Nevadans will continue to be squeezed and priced out of homes by large corporate interests.”
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