California is playing an unparalleled role in Nevada growth, as state population estimates surpassed 3 million people and the U.S. Census Bureau ranked the Silver State as the nation’s fastest growing in 2018.
More than 50,000 Californians moved to Nevada from July 2017 to July 2018, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. That’s nearly 40%of the total number of people who moved from another U.S. state during that time.
Robert Lang, executive director of Brookings Mountain West at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said there are now more adults in Nevada who were born in California than native Nevadans.
Much of the Silver State’s allure lies in the fact that Nevada has no state income tax and a lower cost-of-living in major cities than California, Lang said.
He said housing prices are another factor. Lang says median home prices in population hubs such as Los Angeles and San Francisco are far higher than in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada.
In October, the median sale price of previously owned single-family homes in Las Vegas was $307,000 — less than half the $663,000 in Los Angeles and one-fifth the $1.54 million in San Francisco as of September, according to California Association of Realtors figures.