Brokers predict no dip in home values

Jennifer Robison

Wednesday, July 10, 2002 | 11:09 a.m.

Las Vegas real estate professionals don't see the Yucca Mountain dump approved Tuesday by the U.S. Senate as laying waste to the valley's booming economy.

Laura Worthington, a broker and branch manager who sells 250 homes a year through Realty Executives of Nevada, said she's had just one home shopper ask about Yucca Mountain and its possible effect on Las Vegas.

"(Yucca Mountain) hasn't really been a concern as of yet, though I do expect it to come up more, largely because of media coverage," Worthington said.

As a broker with P and G Realty, Phil Claire said he has discussed Yucca Mountain with "a few clients."

"They kind of laugh about it, but we've never had a single client state that they really had concerns," Claire said.

"When I talk to people on the street about it, one out of five has concerns, one out of five doesn't know about it, and three say, 'What difference does it make?' I'm not necessarily in favor of Yucca Mountain, but I don't see a crisis coming from it."

And Maryellen Mackenzie, a broker-saleswoman who sells more than 100 homes a year through Coldwell Banker Premier Realty, said she's not had a single client bring up Yucca Mountain when considering a home purchase.

That's despite an impact study that Clark County and the state of Nevada commissioned to measure Yucca's potential economic fallout.

The study asserted that home values would drop 3 percent within 3 miles of shipment routes when the high-level nuclear waste begins coursing through town. It also said home values would drop as much as 30 percent within three miles of shipment routes should an accident occur.

Many real estate agents say it's difficult to quantify the damage home values might sustain in such scenarios.

"I think it will affect home values, but I couldn't even speculate on the numbers," Worthington said. "People will be concerned because of the type of danger, but we don't know what kind of an effect it will have."

Claire said a variety of hazardous materials -- including low-level nuclear waste -- have wended their way through town for years, with no discernible effect on property values.

"For 25 years, we had low-level waste going through the same areas, and that never affected property values," he said. "The value of real estate (along proposed shipment routes) was already set when the highways began going through. We see semis wandering down the road every day, and we don't know what's in them."

Elaina Blake, a commercial developer who has also been licensed to sell residential real estate in Southern Nevada for 33 years, said storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is a distant enough prospect that her clients seem largely unconcerned. If the Energy Department succeeds in getting Yucca Mountain licensed, the soonest nuclear waste would be shipped would be 2007.

"People are curious about (Yucca Mountain) because so much has been made of it, but it hasn't frightened anyone away," Blake said. "I just don't think it's really going to affect us here. The (scheduled) shipments are too far away, and by then we might have perfected something more positive. Who knows if shipments will ever start?"

Maryellen Mackenzie said she agrees that an accident involving nuclear waste in Southern Nevada could hurt home values. However, she said Nevada should bargain with the federal government to negate the issue.

"Obviously, if it runs through town, no one would want to live close to wherever it's coming through," Mackenzie said.