Jair Guigui knows all too well about Las Vegas’ housing crisis. His sister recently moved in with him due to rising rental rates, and the 20-year-old said his parents, who were undocumented immigrants, were taken advantage of by a landlord which caused a number of health issues and forced them to move in with his older sister.

There is no way around it, the Las Vegas Valley has a big problem, said the leader of the Nevada Housing Coalition. “Straight answer is we have a housing crisis in every sense of the imagination,” said Maurice Page, executive director for the coalition.

If you're a renter, chances are your rent has increased in the last year. According to Redfin, the median rent in Las Vegas is about $1,500, while the national average is just over $ 1,600.

The Las Vegas metro region has one of the highest rates of rental burdens in the country, according to a new UNLV study. In Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas and the overall metro region, 58.3 percent of all renters are spending more than 30 percent of their income on rental costs. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development states that a renter is “housing cost burdened” if they are spending more than 30 percent of their income on  housing costs.

Investor purchases are on the rise again, and the Las Vegas Valley has seen one of the biggest upticks in the country, according to Redfin.

Wall Street-backed hedge funds, corporate landlords and cash rich investors have been buying up single-family homes across the country as far back as 2009, which experts say means fewer houses on the market for families to purchase. That also could lead to higher rental prices and fewer affordable homes in regions like the Las Vegas Valley. A MetLife Investment Management study shows these companies could own close to 40 percent of all U.S. houses by 2030.

The word of the year when it comes to Las Vegas real estate has to be “inflation.” High interest rates — not seen since the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008 — were brought in by the Federal Reserve last year to stem runaway inflation, brought on by pandemic restrictions wreaking absolute havoc on the global economy. This put a serious damper on the national housing market, and Las Vegas was not immune to the pain.

All eyes will be on the Federal Reserve in gauging where Las Vegas Valley’s real estate market could head next year, area real estate agents said.