Where I Stand — Guest columnist Myrna Kingham: Keep housing affordable

Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2005 | 8:28 a.m.

Editor's note: In August the Where I Stand column is written by guest writers. Today's columnist is Myrna Kingham, president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, the largest professional trade association in Southern Nevada. Kingham was raised in Las Vegas and has worked in the local real estate industry for more than 25 years. She is the broker/owner of Tower Realty Group in Las Vegas.

AS A LONGTIME Las Vegan who has read the Where I Stand column for years, I'm honored to share some thoughts on the local housing market with Sun readers.

Last summer, Lee Barrett, my predecessor as president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors (GLVAR), offered insight into the record-setting housing boom that was just leveling off. One downside of this boom, he explained, was that affordable housing was becoming harder to find in Southern Nevada.

One year later, affordable housing has become one of our most pressing local issues. Over the last five years, local housing prices have soared by 89 percent. In Business Las Vegas, a sister publication of the Las Vegas Sun, reported last month that the local housing index shows the cost of a typical home here is nearly five times more than the median household income. In 1998, local home prices were only 2.7 times the median household income.

That means we can no longer promise newcomers -- especially teachers, nurses, police officers and others -- that they can afford a new home here. This is a relatively new problem for a community that always used inexpensive housing as a major selling point.

The 13,000 members of the GLVAR are working on this issue. But there are no easy answers. The cost of housing, like other products, is largely dictated by market forces. With Las Vegas rolling along as one of the nation's fastest-growing communities and economies, the price of land and homes figures to keep increasing.

Last year we made national news when the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that local housing prices shot up an amazing 52 percent in the second quarter of 2004, compared to the same period in 2003. This appreciation rate was a record for any metropolitan area since the NAR began keeping such statistics in 1982.

The statistics we track at the GLVAR show modest increases since then. According to data we gather from the Multiple Listing Service, the median price of an existing single-family home sold in this market in June was $300,000. That's an all-time high for Las Vegas. But it's a relatively normal 7 percent increase over one year earlier. This indicates a stable and healthy housing market.

Still, wages are not keeping pace with rising housing prices. As Realtors, this concerns us as much as it does our clients.

Last year the GLVAR commissioned a survey showing that 55 percent of all Las Vegans were either somewhat or very concerned about the cost of housing here. This fell short of the 67 percent of all Americans who expressed similar concerns at that time, but it showed that affordable housing is a growing concern here. If we conducted the same survey today, I suspect even more Las Vegans would be more concerned.

Local Realtors are working hard to keep housing as available and affordable as possible. We formed a task force that worked with state lawmakers to limit property taxes. We also launched a GLVAR Quality of Life program to promote affordable housing and provide research and recommendations on key local issues, from water conservation and air quality to transportation and land use.

Our housing boom is based on simple economics. Basically, the demand for affordable housing here is growing faster than the supply. Since most of Nevada's land is owned by the federal government, our association lobbies local and federal government leaders to make more land available for development. Realtors also support efforts to keep rental prices as low as possible and to narrow the widening gap between the cost to own or rent a home.

We see hope in some recent developments, like the trend toward converting local apartments to condominiums. Such trends make homeownership available to more people.

For Las Vegas to continue being America's boomtown, a place where teachers, nurses and blue-collar workers can live better than they did in their hometowns, we must work together to keep housing affordable.