A bipartisan group of Nevada lawmakers is adding a bill to Gov. Joe Lombardo’s special session agenda that aims to limit the purchasing power of corporate housing buyers.

Sen. Ira Hansen (R-Sparks) told reporters in his office Tuesday evening that a petition signed by legislators will add the bill to the ongoing special session Lombardo called Wednesday to deal with film tax credits, his crime bill and more than a dozen other matters. This marks the first time lawmakers have added a bill to a special session agenda in this manner.

The petition is being processed by the secretary of state’s office.

“We have a bipartisan bill that will limit the ability of hedge funds and foreign corporations to compete with people like yourself in the residential housing market,” Hansen said, noting that he worked on the legislation with the governor’s staff and Democratic lawmakers.

The legislation added to the special session agenda is expected to conceptually align with SB391, a bill Sen. Dina Neal (D-North Las Vegas) brought in the 2025 legislative session, with amendments negotiated by Democrats and Republicans.

The measure needed a two-thirds majority vote because it established a corporate housing registry that charges fees, which constitutes a revenue source. With Democrats one vote shy of a two-thirds majority in each chamber of the Legislature, they needed at least one Republican in each chamber to support it. The bill did not receive the necessary support.

Hansen said he worked with Neal to get the bill into shape, and staff in the governor’s office have offered amendments that are being drafted by the Legislative Counsel Bureau. He noted that the amendments represent “reasonable changes,” and Neal accepted most of them. 

The legislation is needed, Hansen said, because of the prevalence of hedge funds in the housing market, citing statistics showing that 15 percent of the houses in Clark County are owned by corporations.

“Salt to the wound, the young people that get outbid by the corporations’ hedge funds have to rent from those people, and now they're gouging them on the rent,” he said. “It is a huge problem. It is huge, and it's growing. We have a housing crisis for younger people in the state, so the bill is trying to address that.”

Neal and Hansen are expected to co-present the bill, and Hansen said he believes that lawmakers will be able to speedily process the legislation, so it shouldn’t add extra days to the session.

It appears the last time a special session proclamation was changed was in 2010, under then-Gov. Jim Gibbons (R), and the amendment added bills to the session.

The decision came after a push from lawmakers to call an overlapping special session to address the issue. 

Under the Nevada Constitution, the Legislature may call itself into a special session without action by the governor if two-thirds of the members of each house sign a petition.

The petition to establish the overlapping special session needed two Republican signatures to get it onto the agenda. Signatures from Hansen and Assm. Alexis Hansen (R-Sparks), who are married to each other, were expected to be key to the effort. 

Ira Hansen said the amended agenda — rather than an overlapping session — was a compromise effort to ensure the bill made it into the session

He had expressed support for corporate buying crackdown legislation in the 2025 session, which would have capped the number of homes a corporation could buy to 100 per year and establish a registry of such purchases. But he said he ended up voting against the measure on the floor at the request of the governor. 

He later told The Nevada Independent that his “no” vote on the bill was one of his only regrets that session.

“Everybody thinks it is a good idea. Nobody is against the idea of protecting Nevada citizens from unfair competition,” Hansen said.

Updated on 11/18/25 at 7:50 p.m. to include more details from Ira Hansen.