Red Lobster promised customers an endless supply of shrimp for $20 — a gamble the struggling restaurant chain hoped would help pull it out of its pandemic doldrums. But Americans, and their appetites, had other plans.

As the real estate market squeezes out potential home buyers in Southern Nevada, many are facing a greater challenge, true affordable housing. There’s a concerning shortage that continues to expand.

In most presidential election years, home prices aren’t a key issue for voters or a major campaign talking point. Consider it another way in which the 2024 election is anything but typical. With mortgage rates up and home prices out of reach for many first-time buyers, the affordability crisis is increasingly in the spotlight as campaign season heats up.

Condo and townhome prices in Southern Nevada reached an all-time high in April 2024. Single-family homes have priced many out of the market as well. Experts said the cost is driven up by a myriad of things including low inventory and cash investors.

The Affordable Connectivity Program connected more than 23 million low-income households to the Internet at the height of the pandemic, but now, the ACP is running out of cash and coming to an end.

According to figures from the Las Vegas Realtors trade group, the median price for an existing home in Southern Nevada is $465,000, up 9% from the same time a year ago and nearing an all-time high of $482,000. As high as our home prices here seem, Stephen Miller, a professor of economics at UNLV, says homes are actually a bargain here compared to many other cities in the western United States.

Just as international migration soared in other states, it dropped precipitously in Nevada. Clark County, home to the tourist-magnet city of Las Vegas, saw a decrease of 58%, the biggest among counties where a half-million or more people live, Census Bureau figures show.

The pandemic hit Nevada hard, but it eventually eased and the state came back to life economically, just not as fast as the rest of the country. Though our unemployment rate is one of the highest in the country, it’s still around 5%, which economists have long said amounts to full employment. What’s hurting is inflation combined with a very low rate of wage growth.

Nevada Democrats and Republicans are playing a game of tug of war when it comes to the housing crisis, arguing who is to blame for the high costs of housing — and whose ideas would fix the problem.

Confusion, chaos and misinformation are spreading like wildfire throughout the real estate world as the industry grapples with the potential fallout of a settlement concerning the National Association of Realtors and agent commissions.

In Part I of this article, I showed how economic growth has slowly declined in all major industrialized economies. I did my review based on 20 countries from around the world, including Australia and Japan, but the GDP growth problem is most pervasive in Europe.

Buying a home could get more expensive after the National Association of Realtors changed several long-standing policies after a massive settlement was reached. According to the Associated Press, the NAR agreed to pay $418 million to sellers following several lawsuits that were raised. The trade group demolished an old-standing policy of the seller paying the commission of both brokers in a real estate transaction. It's usually 5 to 6 percent.