Expert Anticipates Los Angeles Wildfires to Impact Las Vegas Housing Market

LAS VEGAS, NV – As the death and devastation brought on by the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires continues unabated in neighboring California – with countless unfortunate residents displaced from thousands of homes at this point – a real estate industry expert is anticipating the tragedy to begin impacting the housing market in the Las Vegas Valley, an area already dealing with a significant housing crisis of its own.

Many Los Angeles residents who have lost their homes due to the out-of-control fires may be considering looking to relocate to Southern Nevada, on either a temporary or permanent basis, according to the Director and Associate Professor of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Lied Center for Real Estate, Shawn McCoy.

McCoy’s contention that Vegas could be expecting a mass migration of displaced Los Angelinos is based on a previous study conducted by UNLV in 2018 on a series of Colorado wildfires that took place between 2000 and 2012 that destroyed a total of approximately 360,000 homes.

Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles data says that Los Angeles residents make up the majority of out-of-state transplants into the Las Vegas Valley – 43 percent, to be exact – with nearly 158,000 of them opting to relocate to Southern Nevada between 2019 and 2024, the largest number of newcomers out of any other state in the country.

The chief reason cited for the constant influx of Californians into Nevada over the years has been affordability – the cost of living in L.A. is infamously expensive – and that trend is expected to grow as displaced Golden State residents flee to Nevada as the wildfires continue, which McCoy said could also seriously impact an already highly-competitive local rental market.

We may certainly see the fires in L.A. place upward pressure on rent locally in Las Vegas, both as a result of displaced L.A. households whose homes were damaged, but also from two other important groups,” he said. “Households near the wildfires but that were not directly affected by the fires may now hold a heightened awareness or concern of potential future fires and act on that heightened awareness by moving out. This may be especially true given research which shows that about 18 percent of the housing stock in the Palisades is multifamily housing.”

In addition, the valley could also see an increase of arrivals from those who had been thinking of moving to Los Angeles from out-of-state, but are now experiencing second thoughts by the abundance of destructive wildfires.

Think, for example, about households currently outside of L.A. or even the state of California who were in the process of considering a move to L.A.,” McCoy said. “These fires may change these households’ perception of L.A. fire risk and instead of moving to L.A. to rent, they may instead turn to other cities including Las Vegas.”

Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.