Finding an affordable home is a challenge for many Nevada families — and it should concern lawmakers as well. In 2025, the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development reported that the state is short 123,995 housing units, disproportionately affecting low- and moderate-income households, a shortfall that has intensified our state’s broader housing affordability crisis. The solution is obvious: We need to increase the housing inventory, including single-family rentals.

Nevada has experienced strong population growth during the past decade, raising demand for housing across all income levels and housing types. It hasn’t helped that regulatory barriers and rising construction costs have put a chokehold on homebuilders’ ability to produce enough homes to meet that rising demand.

If you can’t afford a house, then what? As home prices and interest rates have gone up, single-family rentals have become a critical option for working families priced out of homeownership. 

In this environment, professionally managed housing providers play an important — and often misunderstood — role in helping close the housing supply gap. Private capital steps in where public funding and small-scale development fall short. Larger investors can finance new construction from the ground up and rehabilitate distressed or vacant properties that individual buyers often avoid. In fast-growing states such as Nevada, where housing shortages are among the most severe, this capital is necessary for responsible growth.

Yet a prevalent narrative in the housing debate focuses on who owns these homes: supposedly villainous corporate homeowners from Wall Street who are scooping up homes on Main Street. Unfortunately, misguided political scrutiny of institutional ownership of single-family rentals overlooks pragmatic solutions that address supply and affordability.

Widespread claims that large investors are crowding out individual buyers ignore recent market behavior. Data shows that large investors have been net sellers for almost two consecutive years and are shifting their focus toward build-to-rent communities. Rather than competing with first-time homebuyers for existing housing stock, these investors are financing homes that would not otherwise exist and fixing dilapidated units that others don’t want to touch. If enacted, single-family rental restrictions would reduce rental options in neighborhoods with better schools, safer streets and stronger job access. In other words, symbolic restrictions on investors risk harming renters far more than they help aspiring homeowners.

And who exactly are these investors? Not part of some shadowy corporate cabal. UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate found that from 2009 to 2024, investors purchased roughly 1 in 5 homes sold in Las Vegas. That looks scary until you scrutinize the definition of “investor,” which often lumps together vastly different types of owners under a single label. For instance, Redfin defines an investor as “any buyer whose name includes at least one of the following keywords: LLC, Inc, Trust, Corp, Homes.” 

By that definition, a middle-aged couple that files small-business paperwork for the two rental properties they operate to help pay for their children’s college tuition is counted the same as a national investment firm. This muddies the data and exaggerates the perceived dominance of large institutions. As a result, headlines such as “One in 5 homes sold to investors” can overstate the degree to which corporate entities, rather than individual or small-scale owners, control the single-family housing stock.

Nevada’s housing crisis is fundamentally a supply problem, not an ownership problem.

Productive housing policy should focus on expanding supply across all price points and housing types. That means reforming zoning laws, streamlining permitting, reducing unnecessary regulatory delays and creating a policy environment that encourages new construction. Policies that restrict development or target specific ownership structures may generate headlines, but they will not lower rents or home prices. 

Fortunately, we are seeing communities taking actions to reduce fees and regulations.  For example, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved a plan to eliminate millions of dollars in impact fees charged to developers that build affordable housing, part of an effort by the county to make housing more affordable and accessible. 

An effective way to assess whether housing policy is good policy is to ask whether it would result in the construction of more homes. Institutional investor restrictions would not build a single home or lower costs. In fact, such a policy would widen the housing and affordability gap.

Nevada’s housing shortage did not happen overnight, and it will not be solved by targeting professionally managed housing providers. If policymakers are serious about affordability, they must work with the private sector to build more homes. Expanding the housing supply is the only sustainable way to lower housing costs.

 Mark Pingle is an economics professor at UNR.