Las Vegas-area communities among top-selling spots for builders in U.S.

Southern Nevada’s homebuilding market has largely pumped the brakes this year, but three communities around America’s casino capital are still among the top-selling spots in the nation.

Builders sold 657 homes in the first half of 2026 in Henderson’s Cadence community, the fifth highest tally among U.S. master-planned communities, according to a report released Thursday by real estate consulting firm RCLCO.

Summerlin, which stretches along the western rim of the Las Vegas Valley, ranked eighth with 547 new-home sales, while Heartland at Tule Springs, in North Las Vegas, ranked 15th with 351 sales, RCLCO reported.

Builders’ sales in Cadence fell 9 percent from the same six-month stretch last year, but sales climbed 6 percent in Summerlin and 66 percent in Heartland at Tule Springs, according to the report.

Southern Nevada, a suburban-heavy housing market packed with cookie-cutter subdivisions, is blanketed with master-planned communities. In general, these big projects involve developers acquiring a land mass; building roads, parks and other infrastructure; and selling off sections to homebuilders.

Nationwide, among the 50 top-selling master-planned communities, new-home sales rose nearly 3 percent in the first half of the year over the same period last year, a strong showing compared to the national housing market, RCLCO managing director Gregg Logan and principal Karl Pischke wrote in the report this week.

Across the U.S., in June, the pace of sales for new houses rose 1.6 percent month-to-month but was down 5.6 percent from a year earlier, according to federal officials.

Bill Owens, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, has said that many potential buyers “remain on the sidelines as they wait for lower mortgage rates, more certainty on inflation and a clearer economic outlook.”

Locally, homebuilders reached the halfway point of 2026 with a sharp drop in sales and construction plans from a year earlier.

Builders landed 4,284 net home sales — newly signed sales contracts minus cancellations — this year through June in Southern Nevada, down 15 percent from the same six-month stretch last year, according to Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research.

The firm also reported that builders pulled 4,156 new-home permits during the first half of the year, down 25 percent from the same period in 2025.

Overall, would-be buyers have shied away from home construction sites as elevated borrowing costs and high home prices make it difficult for many people to afford a purchase.

Plus, higher gas prices and increased inflation have squeezed personal finances this year, and the job market hasn’t been easy, with many applicants finding it maddeningly difficult to get a new job.