Los Angelenos Choose Las Vegas As Top Relocation Destination

According to latest Redfin data, the Las Vegas Valley ranked second in the nation for people relocating from other states. The report notes that Los Angelenos are choosing Las Vegas as their top relocation destination.

During October, the valley added 4,000 residents, behind Sacramento which ranked number one with 5,000 residents added, and ahead of Orlando, Florida, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which added 3,700 each.

“Fast-growing metro areas in the West, such as Las Vegas and Phoenix, showed notable growth,” the report stated. “In the South, net domestic migration gains were seen in Florida, the Carolinas, north Georgia (surrounding Atlanta), and in the major metro areas of Texas — although not in the urban cores of Dallas or Houston.”

UNLV estimates this year on average Clark County is adding around 115 residents a day to its population. According to Bankrate, “Sin City’s population is growing fast. In fact, by 2060, Clark County (of which Vegas is the county seat) is expected to add more than a million new residents, bringing its total population to nearly 3.4 million, according to the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.”

As reported by The Globe, Redfin conducted a study based on two million searches for homes between April 2023 and June 2023 and found that Las Vegas was the most sought after location for “western migrants.” According to the study, a Redfin.com user counts as a migrant if they viewed at least 10 for-sale homes in the relevant three-month period and at least one of those homes was outside their home metro area.

Redfin reports a typical home in the Vegas area costs around $412,000. Compare that with around $975,000 in the Los Angeles area, about $1.4 million in San Francisco and around $826,000 in Seattle. Adding to the appeal, Nevada does not have a state income tax.

The Department of the Interior recently announced that the federal government will start selling public land for as little as $100 an acre to local governments to align with the Biden agenda of “building from the bottom up.”

In June of 2022, The Globe reported that Senator Catherine Cortez Masto is also eyeing Clark County for a massive housing development.

According to our report:

This past June, Cortez Masto pushed for expanded development by pushing legislation to sell off 42,000 acres of public lands to spur new development in the town that borders Lake Mead that will sprawl an area the size of Miami or St. Louis alongside the existing Vegas footprint. According to population estimates ballyhooed to justify the bill, the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act hopes to draw more than 820,000 new residents to Southern Nevada’s patch of the Mojave Desert in the next 40 years.

In alignment with this development, Clark County Commissioners published a “Transform Clark County“–a 400 plus page master development plan which reworked and rewrote zoning ordinances and regulations to transform Clark County into an “equitable, diverse, and climate-resilient’ county.” Within these pages are a plan to develop a portion of 39,000 acres of land the county had previously purchased from BLM in unincorporated Clark County to develop low-income (affordable) housing and multi-family developments–interspersed with single family housing, retail and businesses.

“High mortgage rates and high home prices are driving people away from the coasts and to the Sun Belt, and Las Vegas is a top destination,” said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist. “Although Las Vegas homebuyers also have to contend with high mortgage rates and home prices that continue to climb, Las Vegas looks affordable in comparison to places like Los Angeles, San Jose,or Seattle.”