Real Estate Commons^™

Most Affordable And Fastest-Growing Cities In The Mountain West, 2026, Cason Noll, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet presents data on the most affordable and fastest-growing cities among the five Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The data are sourced from MoneyLion’s “50 Most Affordable, Fastest-Growing Cities” report, which analyzed and ranked U.S. cities by the most affordable places with large population growth. This fact sheet focuses on the 10 Mountain West cities that ranked within the top 50 and their corresponding 5-year population growth rate, median household income, annual cost of living for both homeowners and renters, and the leftover savings available at the end of the year for …

The Price To Rent Ratio As An Indicator For Valuation In The U.S. Real Estate Market, Timothy C. Mahaffey

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the usefulness of the price-to-rent ratio as a primary indicator of housing market valuation within fifteen Metropolitan Statistical Areas that have universities (MSAs). While traditional economic theory suggests that housing prices and rents maintain a stable long-run relationship, recent market volatility has challenged the reliability of this metric. This study utilizes a localized, trend-based analysis to determine the extent to which deviations in the price-to-rent ratio signal genuine market overvaluation or undervaluation.

The empirical results demonstrate a high degree of correlation between ratio deviations and home value trajectories. During the 2021–2022 period, all 15 analyzed cities experienced …

Exploring The Struggles Of Minorities In Low-Income Communities With Affording And Financing Housing In San Antonio, Daniel Maes

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Affordability of housing has emerged as a major socio-economic issue in San Antonio, Texas,

especially among minority groups and other low-income groups. This thesis provides an analysis of the underlying factors that lead to housing unaffordability and the systemic factors that deny

these groups of people a chance to live in stable and affordable houses. This paper combines both primary survey data of local residents and secondary governmental and academic data, which

allows identifying the intersection of income differences, increased property prices,

gentrification, and the lack of affordable housing to worsen the affordability crisis. The

evaluation of the perception of …

Cost Of Living For Older Adults (65+) In Mountain West Metropolitan Statistical Areas, 2024, Anirudh Polagani, Annie Vong, Mohit Pande, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Demography

This fact sheet explores 2024 cost of living data for adults over the age of 65 in the largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) across five Mountain West states: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The data are sourced from the “Elder Index,” a dashboard that focuses on housing, healthcare, food, transportation, and miscellaneous expenses that collectively reflect the monthly expenses for those over the age of 65. This fact sheet focuses on five MSAs in the Mountain West: Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ; Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO; Las Vegas-Henderson- North Las Vegas, NV; Albuquerque, NM; and Salt Lake City-Murray, UT.

The Causes And Impact Of Evictions In Southern Nevada, Mohit Pande

Student Research

As the Southern Nevada region continues to quickly grow, evictions have become a structural feature of the region’s rental market. The region has one of the highest eviction filing rates in the country and this trend has continued to increase in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper examines the availability of market-rate affordable housing and the expansion of subsidized affordable housing to understand how the local housing conditions contribute to the number of evictions in Southern Nevada. Additionally, the paper studies local legal processes, such as the summary eviction system and habitability procedures, to understand the relationship between …

Estimating The Effect Of Residential Sales Prices On Building Permits, Emilio Becerra

All Theses

This paper addresses home sales prices’ impact on residential building permit authorization in South Carolina’s Greenville and Richland counties amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The estimation uses a comprehensive data set of the housing markets in both counties for 2016 to 2022, incorporating 88,098 home sales. The analysis exploits the variation in sales prices of homes to analyze the sensitivity in the supply of permits to builders through an instrumental variables approach. Using two instruments, violent crimes and household income, the effect of sales prices on the supply of building permits is positive and statistically significant. Included in the first-stage regression …

Nevada’S Predictable Housing Train Wreck And What To Do About It, Arthur C. Nelson

Policy Briefs and Reports

Nevada is on the cusp of a housing catastrophe, especially in Southern Nevada.

Consider that the state has fewer households than it should. A household is defined as one or more people who have a home of their own. But for price, location, configuration, and other factors, about 60,000 households in Nevada do not exist because there is no home for them. And it’s going to get worse. Including these “missing households,” nearly 470,000 new occupied homes will need to be built between 2020 and 2040 to meet the housing needs of all Nevadans, or about 23,000 per year. The …

Property Taxes In Mountain West Cities, 2022, Annie Vong, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet examines data on homestead, apartment building, and commercial property tax rates for five cities in the Mountain West: Phoenix, AZ; Denver, CO; Las Vegas, NV; Albuquerque, NM; and Salt Lake City, UT). The fact sheet compares the average tax bill for homestead properties and median home values reported in “50-State Property Tax Comparison Study For Taxes Paid in 2022,” an August 2023 report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence.

The Safest Suburbs In The Mountain West, 2023, Ivan Sun, Zachary Billot, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet presents data from the Smart Asset report, “America’s Safest Suburbs – 2023 Study,” which examines the 370 safest suburbs in the United States and the 35 most affordable safest suburbs. This fact sheet focuses on data for the nine safest suburbs and most affordable safe suburbs in the Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah ranking among the top 100 safest suburbs in the United States.

Education And Advocacy For Universal Design And Accessibility In Housing, Apisara Vairojanakich, Amy Lyons-Brown, Molly Wuebker

Spring 2024 Virtual OTD Capstone Symposium

In the United States, there is a lack of adequate numbers of universally designed and accessible houses in the housing market for the older population and people with disabilities. Many barriers, such as financial support and lack of knowledge for housing-related professionals, can prevent this population from participating in home occupations. The project developed educational products, including the universal design housing experience booklet, universal design housing checklist, and universal design blueprints. These products were delivered through the blog post on Uncurbed LinkedIn website. The needs assessment was conducted to provide the guidelines for the chapters in the booklet and checklist. …

Shades Of Housing: Real Estate Urbanism And State Planning In Egypt, Zeinab Nadeem

Theses and Dissertations

The housing crisis is a global dilemma, especially in the context of urban cities in developing countries. Housing affordability has become more challenging in the recent global and national turbulent economic conditions of rising inflation rates and construction costs, where Egypt is witnessing a surplus of vacant housing units that are either unsold or unoccupied with citizens involuntarily relocating to remote new cities. The government has also significantly engaged in real estate market speculation by offering public land for profits to private investors in the market since the 1990s. The shades of housing found in Egypt are the works of …

An Analysis Of The Housing Affordability Crisis: Private Equity Or Legislation Issue, Jack Polk

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

The aim of this thesis is to explore the claim that private equity investment is the cause of the modern unaffordability in the single family housing market. Through empirical study and historical research we found that the footprint of institutional investors in this space is insignificant. However, legislative errors which have artificially inflated demand and suppressed supply over the past decade have greatly contributed to the crisis and must be corrected for the long term health of the housing space. These corrections will focus primarily in the alleviation of supply pressures for new development and the continuation of the low …

The Shrinking Geography Of Housing Opportunity In Mountain West Metros, 2022, Hira Ahmed, Joshua Padilla, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet examines data from the National Equity Atlas on the changing geography of opportunity across Mountain West metros. The original report includes data on the largest 100 metros in the United States. This fact sheet reports on the overall percentages of affordable zip codes in nine major metropolitan areas in the Mountain West and changes in affordable zip codes for Black, Latinx, and white households in Mountain West metros from 2013 to 2019. Data for nine Mountain West metros are included: Tucson, AZ; Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ; Colorado Springs, CO; Denver-Aurora, CO; Albuquerque, NM; Las Vegas-Paradise, NV; Ogden-Clearfield, UT; Provo-Orem, …

Institutional Capital Effect’S On Single-Family Housing Markets, Henry Harvego

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the impact of institutional investors on single-family housing markets, analyzing six dependent variables and two independent variables across 39 metropolitan cities. Despite receiving significant media attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, the study finds that the impact of institutional investors on median sale price is small and negative. However, institutional investors significantly impact other aspects of the housing market, including homes sold, new listings, inventory, days on market, and average-sale-to-list ratios. The results suggest that institutional investors are creating a more productive market, with transactions happening more quickly and more often. In light of these findings, policy discussions …

Manufactured Homes In Nevada Counties, Joshua Padilla, Annie Vong, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet presents data on the share of manufactured homes in each of Nevada’s 17 counties, as reported in the June 2022 The Daily Yonder article, “With Housing Shortage Still Ongoing, Manufactured Homes are Gaining Ground,” by Kristi Eaton. The original report includes data made available by the Housing Assistance Council (HAC) for each county in the United States from 2009 and 2018.

Housing Availability In Nevada, 2017-2022, Annie Vong, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet examines data on housing availability across nine Nevada counties from 2017 to 2022. Eight Nevada counties are not represented in this fact sheet due to a lack of data in the original report. The original report by MarketWatch analyzes housing inventory from 2017 to 2022 and median list prices in 2022 across counties in the United States.

Shortage Of Affordable Rental Homes In The Mountain West, Joshua Padilla, Kelliann Beavers, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet examines data from the 2022 report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), “The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes” for the Mountain West region. The original report includes data from 2016- 2020 American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) to help “determine the availability of rental homes affordable to extremely low-income households.”

Housing Affordability For Top Occupations In Nevada Metros, 2022, Kristian Thymianos, Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio, Ally M. Beckwith, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet combines housing and employment data from the National Housing Conference (NHC) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to examine housing affordability for the 10 most common occupations in the Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV and the Reno-Sparks, NV metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in Quarter 1 of 2022.

Examining The Current Role Of Out-Of-State Buyers In The Tri-Cities Within The Confines Of Residential Real Estate, Paul Arrowood

Undergraduate Honors Theses

We are seeing an influx of out-of-state buyers into Tennessee, and the Tri-Cities area specifically. As a major emerging housing market in the US, the Tri-Cities is being inundated by people from all states and walks of life seeking a better life in Appalachia. Although the reasons vary by person, many agree that political alignment, taxation levels, and the quietness of this area lends itself to population growth. While most members of the housing industry have noticed this uptick in out-of-state buyers, few have taken the time to analyze their own records or review the empirical evidence that is present …

How Did Homelessness Change During The Great Recession And Recovery?, Jenny Schuetz, Matthew Ring

Policy Briefs and Reports

Job losses from the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated housing insecurity among low-income renters over the past year. Federal, state, and local policymakers have created temporary measures to help reduce displacement among people who have lost their jobs, but there is considerable uncertainty about what will happen when these temporary measures end. To gain insight into how homelessness changes over macroeconomic cycles, we examine changes in homelessness rates from 2007 to 2020. Our analysis focuses on four metro areas that were particularly hard-hit by the foreclosure crisis: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Riverside. Overall homelessness rates declined in all metros …

"Airbnb Go Home:" Tourism Frictions And Short-Term Rentals In New Orleans, Madeline R. Fussell

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the concerns and conflicts around short-term rental (STR) properties in New Orleans neighborhoods. Using data from collected from critical discourse analysis, semi-structured interviews and social media posts, this paper analyzes the ways the city of New Orleans, residents of the city, STR hosts, and platforms like Airbnb discuss issues of safety, displacement, rising costs of living, as well as responsible STR practices. To understand the complexities of the issues people, have with short-term rental properties, this project approaches STRs from a housing and gentrification lens to understand the role these properties play within in the daily atmospheres …

La Hausse De L’Immobilier, Le Déclin Du Pouvoir D’Achat Du Citoyen Tunisien: Quelles Issues ?, Fadhila Aloui Miadi

Dirassat

Title : The rise in real estate, the decline in the purchasing power of the Tunisian citizen: what issues?

Since independence, Tunisia has given pride of place to the housing sector in its economic and social development policies. In this context, various institutions have been set up to help citizens to have decent housing; in this regard, we mention the national real estate company of Tunisia (SNIT), the national housing savings fund (CNEL), which became the housing bank in 1989, the land agency housing... In reality, these institutions offered services only to solvent categories composed mainly of the middle class, …

Covid-19: Housing Hardship Index, Yanneli Llamas, Madison Frazee-Bench, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on May 2020 unemployment rates and mortgage delinquencies in the Mountain West: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. This synthesis is based on nationwide data originally reported by Bankrate senior mortgage reporter Jeff Ostrowski in “Housing Hardship Index: Coronavirus crushes some state economies, spares others.”

Capital Controls And Macro-Prudential Housing Policies In Small Open Economies, Taojun Xie, Guay C. Lim, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

We evaluate the effects of capital controls and macro-prudential policies in small open economies with a housing sector that is open to foreign ownership. The work is motivated by concerns that foreign investments also respond to housing investment opportunities resulting in potential house price inflation and issues about housing affordability. Our dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model features housing as an internationally traded investment. We also consider macro-prudential policies that are combinations of monetary and fiscal instruments. We investigate whether foreign investments in the housing markets are de-stabilising and whether there are appropriate policy responses to mitigate the negative effects of …

Micro-Housing In Seattle Update: Combating “Seattle-Ization”, Taylor Haines

Seattle University Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Neighborhood Change In Las Vegas, Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This Fact Sheet analyzes indicators of demographic and economic change in Las Vegas neighborhoods and suburbs, provided by “American Neighborhood Change in the 21st Century,” a study published by the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity (IMO) at the Minnesota Law School. Researchers reviewed data from the 2000 U.S. Census and the 2016 American Community Survey (ACS) for the top 50 largest metros in the U.S. The study reports levels of neighborhood change, including economic growth, poverty concentration, gentrification, and low-income displacement. Data pertaining to the Las Vegas metropolitan region are synthesized to measure indicators of economic viability and housing availability.

Screened Out Of Housing: The Impact Of Misleading Tenant Screening Reports And The Potential For Criminal Expungement As A Model For Effectively Sealing Evictions, Katelyn Polk

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Having an eviction record “blacklists” tenants from finding future housing. Even renters with mere eviction filings—not eviction orders—on their records face the harsh collateral consequences of eviction. This Note argues that eviction records should be sealed at filing and only released into the public record if a landlord prevails in court. Juvenile record expungement mechanisms in Illinois serve as a model for one way to protect people with eviction records. Recent updates to the Illinois juvenile expungement process provided for the automatic expungement of certain records and strengthened the confidentiality protections of juvenile records. Illinois protects juvenile records because it …

Families Belong Together: The Path To Family Sanctity In Public Housing, Mckayla Stokes

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

In its 2015 landmark civil rights decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court finally held that the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the United States Constitution guarantee same-sex couples’ marital equality. The Court’s unprecedented declaration that the right to marry is a fundamental right under the Due Process Clause strengthened married couples’ right to privacy because it subjects government actions infringing on marital unions to heightened scrutiny. The Supreme Court has the option to minimize the impact of Obergefell by interpreting the right to marriage very narrowly—as only encompassing the right to enter into a state-recognized union …

Housing - Las Vegas And The Middle Class, Brookings Mountain West

Brookings Mountain West Special Events

Brookings Mountain West presents an event focusing on housing as part of “Las Vegas and the Middle Class,” a major project exploring public policy initiatives designed to improve the quality of life of the middle class in Las Vegas and to increase the number of people rising to join its ranks. Through independent, non-partisan analysis and policy development, we seek to advance public understanding of the challenges facing the middle class in Las Vegas, as well as barriers to upward mobility.

This event features presentations that examine Las Vegas as a model for understanding issues critical to the growth of …

Should Las Vegas Bet On Homeownership? Trends In Housing Affordability And Homeownership, Jenny Schuetz

Brookings Mountain West Publications

In many parts of the U.S., rents and housing prices are rising faster than household incomes. Low-income families have always been stretched to pay for housing without sacrificing other necessities. In recent years, housing costs have become a larger source of financial stress for middle-income families. While homeownership has been the primary channel for wealth building in the U.S., two recent trends raise questions about whether this is a viable strategy. First, many homeowners suffered severe financial losses due to housing price declines during the Great Recession (2007-2009). Second, homeownership rates for Black and Latino families lag those of white …