Las Vegas Market Watch

Squatters in the Empty Homes of Las Vegas

July 25, 2016
By Margaret Bruno
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On a drive through Las Vegas, the blight from the housing collapse of eight years ago can still be seen on some blocks: Overgrown and unkempt yards identify the foreclosed and abandoned homes that still linger in the Metro area.

But not all these homes are empty.

Squatters have taken over empty houses in struggling working-class neighborhoods, in upscale communities like Summerlin, and everywhere in between.

Even as construction cranes have returned to the Vegas Strip, and local unemployment has fallen to about six percent, the situation remains a challenge. Metro Police has received more than 4,000 complaints about squatters in 2015, up 43 percent from 2014 and more than twice as many as in 2012.

To combat squatting, the Nevada Legislature passed a law in fall 2015 to make it easier to arrest them. Squatters frequently show phony leases in hopes of staying longer in the homes they have taken over.

Since Las Vegas attracts a significant transient population, and there remains a glut of homes that have already been foreclosed, opportunists can still take their pick of thousands of empty houses.

Real estate agents, who open up homes they expect will be empty, are particularly at risk.

Victoria Seaman, a local Realtor and state assemblywoman who represents Las Vegas, found herself face to face with squatters in 2015. While checking on a home she was selling, two children answered the door and showed her a lease that Ms. Seaman knew was bogus. The parents told her they found the home on Craigslist and met someone at a casino once a month to pay rent in cash.

But there was wasn’t much police could do under Nevada law at that time: If the squatters produced a lease, even if it was clearly phony, and there was no evidence of breaking and entering, it was considered a civil dispute.

The new law has not cured all problems regarding squatters. Investigating phony leases cases takes manpower and time, local police say, and usually involves finding the legal owner. And owners who walked away from underwater mortgages are not always willing to help.

And years of budget cuts during the recent recession have left local police departments short on staff and resources.

In response to squatting, banks have slowed their “cash for keys” programs that offered residents money to leave foreclosed homes. Local officials said some squatters were making a living moving into one foreclosed house after another, then asking the bank to pay them to move out.

But squatters are getting creative as well. Some repair broken windows and other damage from past squatters, pretending they own the place.

North Las Vegas police has investigated numerous squatting cases this year, and report they had seen everything: prostitution rings; teenagers using vacant homes for parties; and even a squatter who tried to pull a Jedi mind trick.

“He was staring at me and telling me, ‘You don’t want to arrest me. You want to let me go,’” the officer said. “The officer responded, ‘You’re going to jail. Today, the Force is not on your side.’”

 

July 25, 2016
By Margaret Bruno