Shane Roskie just moved to Reno from Parker, Colorado to be closer to his girlfriend. The two quickly realized that the housing market was tight.
“There’s not much to really look at,” he said.
He purchased a new home in Double Diamond with his girlfriend because he couldn’t find one in an already established neighborhood.
“There’s not much available so we decided to go with a new house,” Roskie said.
He’s one of many people who are quickly realizing that there’s a shortage of homes in the Reno/Sparks area. And the ones on the market are expensive, and the prices keep going up. So who’s buying these homes and where are they from?
Kylie Rowe, the vice president of Relocation for Dickson Realty, said Northern Nevada is seeing a lot of folks flocking from California.
“So in terms of a pattern of migration, we’re not seeing a pattern from any other state. But I will tell you with the Tesla relocations, because they are largely hiring a number of employees, they are coming from all over the country,” she said. “We’re seeing more of the 25-35-year-old’s moving into this area than any other population range.”
Realtors say Tesla, Google and Panasonic employees are moving to the Reno area and buying houses. And the businesses are making big news for other companies to move here too.
“We see a lot of the e-commerce, the dot.com businesses. So for example, Chewy.com has moved in, Zazzle is one of the newer ones, [as well as] Zulily,” said Thoran Towler, the Chief Executive Officer for Nevada Association of Employers and former Nevada Labor Commissioner.
Other businesses are moving distribution centers to the Reno area and hiring employees to bypass the interstate that often shuts down in the winter. And last winter proved especially difficult.
“We’ve had members admit to us, ‘Hey we’re California-based but we’re opening a distribution center because we can always head east even if the weather’s not great,’” Towler said.
Towler said companies and employers are expanding their businesses and moving from Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, the Los Angeles basin, San Francisco and Seattle. They’re areas where there are a lot of rules, regulations, traffic and no room to physically expand a business.
But the locals from Reno and Incline Village, for example, are buying in new developments like Rancharrah, near Kietzke Lane and McCarran Boulevard.
“You’ve got people who are moving down from the snow line after last year, the winter that was taken place. People who just want to get out of the snow and stop shoveling,” said Joel Grace, Vice President of Development at Reno Land Inc.
There are houses available on the market now, but there’s a good chance construction may not keep up with demand.
“There’s companies that committed to moving to Northern Nevada that are starting the process…. There’s options for them now but long time that might be a big challenge,” Towler said.
During the recession, construction came to a halt. That’s caused the shortage on the market today. Crews have now ramped up construction, but it’s not fast enough.
The experts say new residents tend to rent before they buy a house. And the bad news is that rent is expected to go up between 10 to 15 percent every year for the foreseeable future.
Source – KRNV News 4
