According to The Mercury News, a recent report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University ranks Nevada as the number one leader for land-price growth per acre in the U.S as measured between 2012-2017. The report also states that 1.2 million new households are created each year, but overall, the numbers are not strong enough to reduce housing costs. The top three for land appreciation are Nevada with 158% growth, Colorado at 96% and California at 88%.
Land in the Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise metro area was just shy of $140,000 per acre in 2012 and more than $360,000 by 2017, a nearly 158% increase. The Reno area saw a similar 140% increase.
But in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area, land prices already were more than $2.6 million per acre in 2012 and jumped to around $5.2 million, a roughly 98% uptick. Prices in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area rose from a little more than $1.3 million to north of $3 million, a 124% increase. There's "much more room to grow" in places such as Nevada, said Alex Hermann, a research analyst with the Harvard center.
One reason California isn't keeping pace with Nevada and Colorado is that the increases in land values in some less populous counties have been more modest. Prices in Humboldt County, for instance, ticked up only around 9% between 2012 and 2017. In Calaveras County, they went up just 23.5 percent.
According to the report, high land prices may help explain a lack of middle-market housing. Rising land costs and labor shortages, the report says, are prompting growing concern from developers, who are reluctant to build homes affordable to lower-income residents.
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