Sierra Sheppard bought her house just in time. 

Six years ago, she and her boyfriend put in offers for about a dozen properties and managed to snag their Gardnerville home one a day after it went on the market. 

"In 2020, it was financially a lot easier," the 30-year-old native Nevadan said. 

The real estate agent and part-time Trader Joe's employee noted that, since then, interest rates have ballooned. She says that's the biggest reason her clients struggle to afford a home — and why her family can't move to a bigger place. 

"They're building these homes at a higher price and setting a higher price, but they're not thinking about what is the actual income of the local Nevadan that's looking for these homes," Sheppard said. "Not everybody works at that Tesla Gigafactory. Not everybody's making six figures."

Incomes across the country are stagnant. New residents moving in from out of state are paying cash, pricing out locals. Per Federal Reserve economic data, the median price of a home in Nevada has risen roughly 40 percent in the past six years, to $492,500.

To make that price affordable,a household would need to earn about $110,000 per year. That's more than 36 percent higher than what the median Nevada household actually earns — roughly $81,000. 

(Our calculation defines "affordable" as less than 30 percent of gross income, and assumes an estimated $75,000 down payment, 6.93 percent interest rate, 0.5 percent property tax rate, 0.5 percent private mortgage insurance, and $2,025 annual insurance costs.)

The problem is so dire even molasses-slow Washington can't ignore it. 

"Used to be that you could sell a house in California, move to Nevada, buy two houses for half the price, and have some left over for furniture," Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) said at a press conference this month. "That is not the case anymore."

Nevada's entire congressional delegation has rallied around the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a sweeping bipartisan law that more than 80 percent of federal lawmakers supported and that some experts say is Congress' greatest win on housing in a generation. With more than 50 sections, the law aims to restrict corporate buyers, cut red tape and provide new financing tools. 

Last Friday, nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump called the bill a "big yawn," it became law without his signature. Though he attempted to use it as leverage to pass his higher-priority voter ID law, the president supports the housing package. In fact, everyone from tenant advocates to developers to landlords have spoken out in its favor.

And though the law may take many years to pay off, many are glad Congress is doing something. 

"It's woefully slow in a way," said Ben Iness, coalition coordinator for the Nevada Housing Justice Alliance, "but shows the increasing understanding of the housing crisis nationally as this urgent issue."

'Homes are for people, not corporations'

In a year marked by populist rage, politicians are eager to show off a section of the law called "Homes are for people, not corporations." The provision cracks down on corporations competing with families to buy homes, an issue especially resonant in Nevada.

State Sen. Fabian Doñate (D-Las Vegas) has experienced that struggle himself. He managed to buy a home in downtown Las Vegas two years ago, at 28, after scraping together nearly a decade of savings and securing a Federal Housing Administration loan. In the process, he missed out on a few properties and wondered who had bought them. 

"I would go back to the property records of some of the properties that I had lost a bid on, and a lot of them were from out-of-state corporations," he said. "The ZIP code that I live in is actually one of the most sought-after from private equity."

As of 2025, one report found corporate investors owned one-quarter of Las Vegas homes, the second-highest rate in the country. In the past few years, investors have accounted for more than 20 percent of home purchases in the city. 

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aims to change that by preventing investors who already own 350 single-family homes from buying more, with some exceptions. It instructs the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to measure the impact of the policy two years after it goes into effect. 

In a written statement to The Nevada Independent, Titus mentioned how she testified at the Legislature last year in support of a bill that would limit all institutional investors' home purchases to 1,000 units each year. Asked what one provision would go the furthest to make housing more affordable in Nevada, Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) named the new restrictions on corporate homebuyers. 

"We were able to pass a bill that limits investors gobbling up housing," she said.

Some of the policies first appeared in a bill Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) introduced to prevent price gouging, in part by directing the federal government to look into investors who bought up "an excessive amount" of single-family housing. As a former member of the financial services committee, Horsford said he had direct conversations with the chair and ranking member who shaped the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and is "very pleased with the outcome." Horsford said he expects to see results "very soon."

Not everyone agrees. For one, experts say investors are no longer rushing to buy up homes, meaning the provision will matter less than it might have years ago. For another, corporations often fix up and flip undesirable homes. Though the act includes carveouts for investors who upgrade properties or build to rent, the new law could complicate those efforts, potentially backfiring on renters in particular.

"If these investors are no longer infusing capital and betting on Nevada, and say, for example, single-family rentals by professionally managed corporations become obsolete, where are folks living?" asked Nevada housing industry lobbyist Mackenzie Warren Kay. "Who is their landlord? A mom and pop landlord that may not have the same resources to fix the AC unit when it goes out in the middle of the summer?"

Many are also skeptical about enforcement. How will the government confirm exactly how many properties an investor owns? 

"The level of sophistication that has existed with some of the private equity folks, is that it's very easy to stand up a shell corporation," Doñate said. "You can place as many caps as you want. There's plenty of attorneys that are going to figure out the loopholes." 

When will homes get cheaper?

Despite widespread support, no one knows for sure when the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act will actually make homes more affordable — if it drives down prices at all. 

Among the more pessimistic is Bill Brewer, executive director at the Nevada Rural Housing Authority, who noted that even the smallest starter home in Carson City now costs approximately $400,000 to build, especially factoring the granite countertops, multiple bathrooms and well-insulated walls today's buyers expect. In addition to buyers' higher standards, land scarcity, regulatory delays and the higher costs of labor and materials contribute to the rising prices.

"You cannot work at a $20-an-hour job and afford to get into that house," Brewer said. "You just can't. How do we make that cheaper? I don't know that we can make it cheaper."

Brewer said the housing supply crisis is so deep that he's "not sure if we'll ever get caught up." 

But the new law will help America try. Several sections target affordable housing, which is generally occupied by residents who earn less than the median income for their area and where costs don't exceed 30 percent of what they make. In Nevada, these units are especially important for the state's large number of service and gig workers. 

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Nevada is about 78,000 affordable units short of what it needs to house its lowest-income renters. Increasing supply could have ripple effects for higher earners as well — years down the line.

As the chief operating officer of Ovation, a company that develops, builds, and manages communities in Las Vegas, Jess Molasky knows that firsthand. 

"Even if I could break ground on everything tomorrow, it takes years for projects to be fully realized," he said. "When there is a housing crisis, the reason the response feels so slow is again, supply and demand. It can take three years to get even a quick project in the ground."

The 21st Century Road to Housing Act uses a mosaic of tools (and dollars) aimed to speed up building. Key changes include:

• The reauthorization of the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which awards federal grants to states and localities for affordable housing and which Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) previously introduced a bill to reauthorize;
• Creation of an "innovation fund" of $200 million for grants to those who boost housing supply;
• A provision allowing Community Development Block Grants to fund the construction of affordable housing, and a higher cap on the share of capital banks can invest in public welfare projects such as affordable housing. 

Other provisions snip through red tape, which can hinder affordable housing. A mix of public and private funding sources — what some call "financial lasagna" — make such projects viable. 

"Some of those forms of capital have specific timelines on them," said Kathi Thomas, chief housing officer at the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority (SNRHA). "Time is definitely money, and the more mixed finance deals that are done, the more co-located those schedules are, and the more critical it is to be able to align everything in a timely way."

The new law simplifies environmental reviews. These could help speed up notoriously slow land transfers for affordable housing under the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA), which allows the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to sell public land around Las Vegas at discounted rates for affordable housing. 

"We've been very successful using SNPLMA to partner with the county and the state and the city to build affordable housing," Ovation's Molasky said. "It's awesome, but the process is long."

The 21st Century Road to Housing Act also targets "infill projects," built on small parcels of land already surrounded by other developments — a move Horsford said will "help those projects in the future get done more efficiently."

Maurice Page, executive director of the Nevada Housing Coalition, predicted the new law could add up to 7,000 units over the next decade. If it hadn't been enacted, he said, the numbers "would be scary." 

"As long as we're able to keep pushing legislation, and good legislation, like the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, we'll continue to put small dents in this dirt that we're trying to dig out of," he said. 

Who will benefit first? 

Some Nevadans will see more immediate benefits, including disabled veterans who rely on rental assistance vouchers to avoid homelessness. 

"This was an idea that came from one of our veteran working groups," Horsford said, explaining that veterans benefits will no longer count as income when trying to qualify for subsidies.

Rural Nevadans have other reasons to celebrate. The law allows HUD to launch a pilot program increasing access to small-dollar mortgages, which can be hard to get because they aren't very profitable for lenders, but are critical in less-expensive areas. 

The law also includes a section focused on manufactured homes, which can be set up in months or even weeks. Cortez Masto told The Nevada Independent that it features provisions from a pilot program she led.

"They don't ever have enough money to improve and rehabilitate those communities to address infrastructure needs," she said. "It was such a successful pilot project that we put it in the housing bill." 

The law eliminates a federal requirement that these homes be built on a permanent chassis. It also instructs HUD to review barriers to financing and authorizes bigger federal loans for them. 

Brian Bonnenfant, project manager at UNR's Center for Regional Studies, said those provisions could be especially effective in places builders have traditionally balked at taking on permanent projects during mining booms and busts. 

"Some of the stuff in the bill that will address the manufacturing and the modular could really, really help our rurals," he said.

The changes could affect urban areas, too. The Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority is one of a handful that owns and operates mobile home parks. Thomas said these types of homes have fallen out of favor, but the new law could revitalize them. 

"Anyone who's jumped on the tiny home bandwagon — it's going to be particularly appealing to them," she said. "Because you can use modular or manufactured housing building methods to construct smaller homes … at a cost savings." 

Ultimately, from corporate limits to tiny homes, state officials will be the ones who decide exactly how the law gets implemented and if and when it pays off. 

"We always hear talking points from politicians, and we see potential legislation passed, but until we actually see it happen, we honestly are always in a wait-and-see-type position," Las Vegas Realtors President George Kypreos told The Nevada Independent. 

When does he expect to see?

"It's definitely not going to be tomorrow," he said.

Where does it fall short? 

Kypreos and other Nevadans still have a long wish list of other housing supply policies they think might make a difference.

In a state where the federal government owns approximately 85 percent of the land, unlocking more space is chief among them. 

"We just don't have enough affordable land for developers to purchase," Kypreos said. 

At her press conference, Lee made an aside to The Nevada Independent on the importance of passing a lands bill. But the delegation also has other ideas to boost supply. 

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) told The Nevada Independent she has tried to pass legislation to train more workers to build houses and eliminate tariffs on building supplies. Titus said she would have liked to see the package go further than it did, and plans to introduce a bill that would expand on the law's infill provisions to provide tax incentives for builders constructing affordable housing in population centers. 

She is also among those who thinks the government could do more to help Nevadans hurting right now — she noted Clark County has roughly the population of Chicago but a quarter as many rental assistance vouchers, leaving thousands of low-income residents on a three-year-long wait list. 

Doñate, the state senator, wants to see data on whether people who grew up in the state are actually the ones moving into affordable housing. Last year, he introduced a bill to reduce interest rates for first-time homebuyers. Sheppard, the Gardnerville Realtor, wants "a price cap for a certain value of home."

Iness, the housing justice advocate, raised concerns about a provision of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act that would allow more public housing to be converted to privately held Section 8 housing. He also mentioned rental assistance and rent gouging prevention as faster fixes worth consideration. 

"We're celebrating this long-term dream and vision that will take, I don't even think, years, I think it will take decades or more," he said. "So where does that leave folks now?"

Nevada Independent intern Samantha Poblette contributed to this report.