On Live & Local with Kevin Wall on AM 670 KMZQ in Las Vegas, SPPI President and CEO Patrick M. Brenner argued that Nevada’s housing debate has diagnosed the wrong problem. It is easy, he said, to point at a large company buying houses and call it the reason homes cost so much; the real question is whether the state is building enough housing for the people who need it.
Mr. Brenner told Mr. Wall that the bill to restrict institutional investors, which Governor Joe Lombardo vetoed and which is being redrafted for the 2027 session, would make the shortage worse. Housing markets differ from state to state, he added, so a single federal rule for all fifty is not workable policy. What holds back supply is red tape and slow permitting: had the country kept building at the pace of the 1980s and 1990s, it would be well on its way to working through today’s shortage.
Asked whether housing will be a campaign issue this November, Mr. Brenner said he hopes candidates make affordability a priority, with pragmatic reforms rather than bans on the investors who add rental supply. Institutional investors are net sellers of homes, he noted: after their years as rentals, the houses go back on the market for families to buy, which is behavior policy should encourage.