LETTER: High housing prices and federal land

McKenli Williams Boulder City August 2, 2026 - 9:00 pm In a story last week, Review-Journal business writer Patrick Blennerhassett wrote about a common and frustrating trend in Southern Nevada: housing inventory and closed sales are up, and yet housing prices remain high. The article blames mortgage rates and sellers unwilling to lower prices for June’s record $450,000 median home price. Those matter but don’t address the biggest reason prices won’t fall: There’s almost no private land left to build on. The federal government controls almost 90 percent of Clark County. When land is that scarce, the remaining land gets bid up to extraordinary prices at BLM auctions, sometimes exceeding $400,000 an acre. Builders pass those costs to buyers. Congress tried to fix this. The 1998 Southern Nevad