Developers in landlocked Las Vegas want a crucial element that isn’t theirs: federal land.
As buildable land in the Las Vegas Valley becomes more scarce, land prices have doubled and builders covet the extensive land holdings owned by Uncle Sam, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
The typical price of commercial land in the second quarter was $16.56 per square foot, compared to $7.50 a square foot in the summer of 2022, according to Colliers. Meanwhile, home prices have gone up 40 percent in four years.
The federal Bureau of Land Management controls 88 percent of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, the largest percentage in the country, George Garcia, founder of G.C. Garcia, told the newspaper.
“This is by far the dominant issue,” Garcia, who has worked in land planning and development for three decades, told the Review-Journal. “If you go to Arizona, Texas, places like that which are high-growth areas, they don’t have that constraint.
“And so, that is an enormously limiting factor because it chokes the development and expansion.”
The Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act passed in 1998 identified 67,000 acres out of the 2.9 million available for disposal in the Las Vegas Valley that could be used for either commercial or residential development, former BLM employee Mike Ford told the newspaper.
Around 33,000 acres of smaller BLM parcels throughout the county also are identified for disposal and could be developed, he said.
There’s roughly 27,000 acres of BLM managed land remaining for disposal, but developers must first identify the parcels to the local government where the land is located, according to Theresa Coleman, district manager of the Southern Nevada District Office for the BLM.
“If the local jurisdiction agrees to the parcel sale, it submits a nomination to sell the land by the BLM. BLM then completes the necessary processes to ensure the parcel may be offered for sale,” Coleman told the Review-Journal in an email. “Since 1998, almost 44,000 acres have been disposed (of) within the boundary through land sales” and other means.
Ford said the goal was for the BLM to be “totally out of the urban land management business” within five to 10 years of the 1998 act. That didn’t happen.
Brad Nelson, who runs a development advisory services firm for projects in Nevada, California and Hawaii, accused the BLM of tipping the scales of the oldest economic model: supply and demand.
“That’s the cause of the crisis, and it is reflected in the price of the product. Because there is fewer product, the prices go higher,” he told the newspaper. “In most markets a builder can acquire land about anytime they desire.
“Not in Las Vegas, since so much of the undeveloped land is controlled by the BLM auction process.”
Last summer, U.S. Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nevada, proposed a bill that would “tackle federal appraisal bottlenecks” and streamline the appraisal process for land in the Las Vegas Valley. The Accelerating Appraisals and Conservation Efforts Act passed the House and was endorsed by Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo.
“We can’t let red tape get in the way of key land transactions that will support conservation, build critical infrastructure, and help cut housing costs,” Lee said in a statement at the time.
— Dana Bartholomew
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