News You Can Use

With the spring leasing season of 2025 fully underway, healthy demand is giving the Las Vegas multifamily market the ability to chew through a historic wave of new supply that arrived over the past three years. Between 22Q1 and 25Q1, developers brought roughly 15,000 apartments to market in Las Vegas, representing the largest wave of construction since at least the Great Recession. Demand 

has risen to meet this development as well, reducing vacancies over the past year and a half. Net absorption reached one of its highest levels ever recorded in Las Vegas in 2024, with most of the occupancy gains in assets built between 2023 and 2024.

Supply pressure and lukewarm demand have driven the industrial vacancy rate higher in Las Vegas over the past year, as the spring of 2025 endures shaky footing and a souring national economic backdrop at the moment.

Approximately 11.6 million SF delivered last year, a high amount of supply by the historical standards of Las Vegas' industrial market. However, the pace of quarter over-quarter completions has decelerated sharply since 24Q1. Due to the abrupt slowdown in starts over the past year, quarterly completions are likely to resemble their

pre-pandemic average during the balance of 2025.

At 10.3% as of 25Q2, Las Vegas has one of the lowest office vacancy rates among major U.S. metros. The trend of large-scale negative absorption in many office markets has not played out here. The local economy's

dependence on the leisure hospitality sector and minimal tech exposure have served as a buffer against national downsizing trends. Office-using employment growth played a considerable role in Las Vegas' economic rebound post-pandemic and underpinned consistent demand for office space. But this momentum has waned more recently. Furthermore, five-year leasing volume is

still about 10% to 20% below 2015-19 levels.

As spring rolls through the Las Vegas Valley, the local retail market remains competitive for tenants seeking space. The availability rate is 5.4% and the vacancy rate is 5.0%, both near 15-year lows as demand has consistently mitigated pressure from new supply. Between mid-May 2024 and mid-May 2025, absorption nearly matched deliveries in Las Vegas' retail market. Leasing activity in 25Q1 continued the market's deceleration from its 2021 peak. This trend has primarily

due to the lack of available space that meets tenant requirements. The 3.2 million SF of general retail space leased between the beginning of 24Q2 and the end of 25Q1 showed considerable momentum for standalone properties, however, which constitute the bulk of deliveries.

Tourism is the main economic driver in Las Vegas, as the destination is famed for its gaming industry, nightlife, convention business, events, and expanding sports destination. Las Vegas is the nation's largest hospitality market by room count and still achieves the third-highest 12-month average occupancy in the U.S., only trailing New York and Oahu. Driven by leisure and group demand, the 12-month occupancy through February was 78.7%. In 2024, RevPAR is projected to increase by approximately 8%, lifting occupancy above 80% and ADR above $200, a historic peak. The market is boosted.

by hosting mega events such as the Formula 1 Grand Prix race and the 2024 Super Bowl.

 The Boring Company, a tunnel construction firm founded by billionaire Elon Musk, is expanding a major underground transportation project in Las Vegas and adding a corporate location in Austin, Texas, as the startup tries to test superfast hyperloop transit across the United States that could eventually affect real estate development. 

The Nevada rental housing market could turn the corner this year.

Apartment rent growth in the state’s two primary markets is expected to outperform both the United States and recent history in 2025.

The strengthening outlook comes on the heels of wheeling property performance over the past five years. Rent growth surged to historic highs in the 24 months following the onset of the pandemic before a wave of supply and faltering renter demand caused gains to slow precipitously and turn negative.

A slowdown in construction and a rebound in renters leasing apartments allowed rent growth to improve in 2024, a trend expected to continue this year.

Las Vegas rent growth to return to positive territory

Las Vegas is, by far, the largest multifamily market in Nevada with 193,000 apartments in its inventory today. As such, it has also been subjected to the largest multifamily boom in both the state and the history of the market.

At its peak, the multifamily construction pipeline in 2022 and 2023 reached a high of nearly 10,000 units under construction in Clark County, the principal county of the Las Vegas metropolitan area.

The supply-heavy situation in Sin City has understandably made for intense competition between owners of existing complexes, who have cut rents and offered concessions to woo renters over the past couple of years. As a result, rent growth in the Las Vegas multifamily market ended 2024 in the red, as it did the year prior.

Yet, the fall of rents in Las Vegas has been less dramatic than in other Sun Belt markets over the past two years, which have experienced an even more dramatic increase in new units than Clark County. This has left Las Vegas with a considerably smaller hole from which it must dig itself out, at least compared to peer markets in the Southwest, such as Austin and San Antonio in Texas as well as Phoenix.

With roughly 4,000 units under construction as the first quarter of 2025 comes to a close, the supply situation in Las Vegas has moderated substantially. This should lead to a shift in the balance of pricing power between landlords and tenants, with owners regaining some ability to push rents this year and the next, at least on a nominal basis.

Reno apartment recovery in full swing

The pace of rent growth is poised to accelerate in the Reno multifamily market this year as steady underlying demand drivers and a drop-off in new construction support gains.

More than 4,500 net new apartments were completed in 2023 and 2024 combined, the largest two-year period of inventory growth on record. This supply-driven increase in competition caused rent growth to turn negative in 2023, and a historic rebound in renter demand was needed to keep growth positive in 2024.

Looking to this year, less than 1,000 units are now underway in Reno, less than half of which are scheduled for completion in 2025.

The easing of supply-side pressure is expected to drive an improvement in market-wide apartment occupancy, providing landlords with ample leverage to push rents.

As a result, the average asking rent is forecast to rise 3.4% in the Reno apartment market in 2025, outpacing the 2.6% gain expected for the U.S. This would also mark the strongest annual increase since 2021 and could indicate the market is on a sustainable road to recovery.

Source: CoStar Analytics