Las Vegas got the green light for an affordable housing alternative. The City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to approve a proposed tiny-home community.
About 50 custom tiny homes will be constructed on a 2.25-acre lot in Las Vegas that currently sits vacant.
Sunridge on Searles is a $6 million project, led by Accelerated Real Estate, which will use Boxabl materials to construct the homes.
Boxabl, a Las Vegas–based technology company, specializes in factory-built, foldable modular housing. Elon Musk made headlines in 2022 by revealing that he owns a Boxabl tiny home.
"As a large-scale manufacturer of homes right here in Las Vegas, we're very pleased to be able to provide quality homes for this terrific local residential development," Boxabl CEO Paolo Tiramani tells Realtor.com®. "The purpose of Boxabl is to solve the housing crisis through technology and scale, and this is certainly on mission."
Each unit will be about 360 square feet and is expected to rent for $1,000 per month, including utilities.
The median asking rent in the Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV, metro is $1,423, which is 17.6% higher than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We're really excited about it," developer Gary Gumm tells Realtor.com. "It's something that's really innovative. Tiny-home developments have been done, but the ones I've seen had houses on wheels. This is more unique since the Boxabl homes will be attached to a foundation. These are on grade, on a pad, with no steps to get into the units, which makes it nice for seniors."
Gumm says they've been developing the project for three years and that they overcame a lot of obstacles to get it approved.
"Our property was zoned for multifamily, so we had to work with the city to get the R3 multifamily zoning codes rewritten to include tiny homes," he says. "We look at that as a feather in our cap, since it will help the zoning for future projects as well."
Affordable housing solution in Las Vegas
Gumm says this tiny-home community will help tackle the affordable housing crisis.
"It's not going to solve the problem, but it's one piece of the puzzle," he says.
Based on data from the Nevada Housing Coalition, Nevada still needs 78,000 rental units to serve extremely low-income individuals, families, and seniors.
The Realtor.com State-by-State Housing Report Card gave Nevada a C-, underscoring the challenge of balancing growth with affordability. The report, part of the Let America Build campaign, measures how states are performing on both fronts: current affordability and new-construction activity.
“My council colleagues, the mayor, and I recognize that housing opportunities are so, so important," City Councilwoman Olivia Diaz told FOX5. "It’s actually one of our four priorities for us. We want to see attainable housing opportunities, and we want to see ending homelessness in our community. The way to do that is to ensure that we offer more affordable housing opportunities to our community."
Diaz said that "maybe this will start a wave of people who are interested in this type of development, and we welcome [it] because we need more and more and more attainable housing units."
"I love the idea of tiny homes," Mayor Shelley Berkley tells Realtor.com. "They look small from the outside, but then you walk in and they are beautiful. I think it is a great option, and I am very supportive because it satisfies everything the city is talking about when it comes to alternative housing ideas. We have to have options in all income brackets.”
This new project in Las Vegas is the first tiny-home community that will be built by Boxabl.
Obtaining permits is the next step—and, once that happens, a Boxabl house can be set up in about an hour.
The plan, according to Gumm, is for the homes to be ready for residents by late 2026 or early 2027.
