Amy Groves, director of the Coalition for Housing Freedom, says Nevada’s housing crisis is driven by limited land and costly regulations. Groves predicts a 5–10% drop in home prices due to high interest rates and lack of housing, and criticizes media bias against ICE and the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies.
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Today is Nevada news and views. Thursday, if you want to find out more about Nevada news and views, great source, great source of information and news locally, statewide and nationally, I encourage you to go to Nevada news and views.com. Great, great stuff and joining us for the first time on our Nevada news reviews Thursday, is the director for the Coalition for housing freedom, and that’s Amy groves. Amy, thanks for being with us this morning on Vegas at eight.
Oh, thank you for much for having me. I’m looking forward to it.Alan Stock 0:35
Well, we are about to do it right now. You wrote a lot of articles, and I want to get this the various some of the things you’ve written about. First thing I want to talk about, though, because I know you know you’re champion of the bit, to be able to talk about this, and we can’t get away from it. And that’s the ice protests that are going on in Minneapolis. Ice there to arrest people in the community who are illegal aliens, criminal illegal aliens, and they have to go into the community to find them, because sanctuary entities like cities like Minneapolis won’t hold them for ice, which will make it clean and easy, and you won’t have these problems. Instead, they release them back into the community, and it’s a Where’s Waldo type of thing, not having to go out and find these people. And of course, a lot of this is being, I think, structured. So there are more and more demonstrations coming out. Your thoughts on what’s going on in Minneapolis right now?
Amy Groves 1:35
It’s kind of crazy. I’ve actually been in Minneapolis twice in the last six weeks. My parents actually live just outside of Minneapolis, so I’ve been flying into that airport, and it is tense, and it’s very It’s baffling to me as to why, you know, ice legally has the right to do what they’re doing. So why are we seeing all these protesters try to stop the the rule of law? It is crazy how we’re they’re creating their own criminal element to block these ice I love what ice is doing. They should be doing that. That’s what our constitution is about. We should be looking after people that are not here legally, and especially the criminal element. It’s like, it’s like they can’t even hear themselves on what they’re blocking. They want ice to leave alone the rapists and the criminals and the felons that are here illegally. I don’t understand it. And a lot of Minnesotans that are there living it don’t understand it either well.
Alan Stock 2:32
And if we did allow this to go forward, as the demonstrators would like, you’re right, these folks would be back in society committing more and more crimes. And if you want to blame anyone at all, I think the initial blame has to rest on the shoulders of the Biden Harris administration for the day that they were inaugurated, beginning to admit the many millions of illegals who came across the border on an illegal basis, and they began this no vetting process, flying flying some of these people into cities, especially the northern type of northeastern cities, flying people in. And they created this problem. And now it’s up to Donald Trump to just clean it up. It is,
Amy Groves 3:19
and you know, Donald’s doing a great job with it, and it’s amazing in the media that he’s actually using ice less than the Biden Harris administration. Yet the Biden Harris administration got zero press for doing their job, and Donald’s being like hung out in the public for doing a great job with it, and doing the same job that some of the Biden Harris did. I mean, they did deport some people, but they absolutely have created this problem the prior administration.
Alan Stock 3:49
Well, the reason you’re not seeing a lot of the positive stuff toward the Trump administration is because 93% of the coverage on the what’s going on in Minneapolis. 93% coming from ABC, CBS and NBC are all anti ice, 93% that’s not far from like 100% of all coverage saying ice is wrong. Instead of taking an objective journalistic point of view, these people should be embarrassed to call themselves journalists. I want to talk about something else too. You wrote about this was from your December 23 column, and it was in a relation, something I talked about this morning. You wrote about a fake letter tied to Jeffrey Epstein that made the round that dragged President Donald Trump into the scandal, like he was part. He was involved in this whole thing. Now, I’ll let you tell the how this was disapproved in a minute, but I want to just remind you that i i talked this morning about Cameron Caskey, who appeared on CNN earlier this week, and who said that Donald Trump was part of a he said. Had the human sex trafficking network. Okay, that’s what he said. Now he doubled down on it during the show, and the next day, he wound up saying, Oh, I guess that wasn’t the case. And he he had to back off from the whole thing. But this thing was disapproved by the FBI and the DOJ, correct.
Amy Groves 5:21
And I think that we’re going to start seeing a lot more of this as this, you know, emotional entertainment journalism catches on even more. Nobody is fact checking in. And it used to be the, you know, a picture is worth 1000 words. We could trust a photo. We can’t trust the photos at all anymore, because even, you know what my level of technology, which is not high, I can change things, and it is hard, unless you have that original to know the back end, to know what was actually digitally altered, right? There’s a lot of really smart people trying to figure it out, but us as layman, we are not going to know, and it’s going to get much worse in the next year.
Alan Stock 6:00
Yeah, the FBI wound up you wrote here. They wound up saying that the handwriting didn’t match Epstein’s. The envelope was postmarked three days after Epstein died. Came north Virginia. Northern Virginia, not New York, where Epstein was being held. So this thing was a complete bust entirely, but nonetheless, people tried to use it to get to Trump, even than in my lying in the least bit absolutely amazing,
Amy Groves 6:28
and a large part of people will still believe it a year from now, even though it’s been disproved.
Alan Stock 6:34
You know, people, as I said this morning, people are believing that. I still believe the Steele dossier, which said that President Trump, when he was long before President, was in a hotel room in Europe with a prostitute urinating on the bed. I mean, that’s what they put out a part of The Steele dossier, and of course, that’s been proven to be BS, but nonetheless, people still refer to it today, and they use it as much as they can. The narrative is put out there. It’s implanted in the brains of people, and the retractions are usually on page 18 at the bottom in very small print.
Amy Groves 7:07
Yes, and that will continue to happen. All right,
Alan Stock 7:09
I want to talk about something else, because you’re involved in real estate as well, and you have written about the fact that it’s becoming harder and harder to buy a home here in Nevada and particularly in Clark County, I do want to talk about that and about whether or not there is a housing bust that’s on the horizon. So you’ve got your finger in the pulse of that. We’ll find out more when we talk to Amy groves after we check in with traffic and your fox five, First Alert weather update here on Kx and T and a good morning. Amy groves joining us. She is the Director of coalition for housing freedom as part of our Nevada news reviews, Thursday segments and again. Amy, thanks so much for taking the time to join us this morning. I appreciate it very much. We have a problem in our area here about not having enough homes for people to be able to buy, and people even rentals where more and more rentals are going up, but we do have problems here, and we’re not building houses fast enough, and yet there’s a demand to build them. Why is it the case that we’re not building them fast enough. And what can be done to help turn that around?
Amy Groves 8:25
I think one of the biggest thing we can do is some of the BLM land, if they would release that or sell that to some developers, that would greatly help. But then, once that happens, about 20% of every housing cost is government regulation. We need to reduce some of that cost, and we need to speed it up, because it takes almost a year from the time they put their plans in with the county until they have final approval to build houses. So we are already behind the proverbial eight ball for the next 10 to 15 years, because we have to look back to the last few years to see what permits were pulled. And it is way down, even though we’re number one in the county or in the country for building permits, we just say it fast enough,
Alan Stock 9:08
you see 20% of the costs of a new home you attribute to the government regulation. What kind of regulation is that?
Amy Groves 9:18
Well, like all new buildings, have to have sprinklers in them, and with that sprinkler comes a larger monthly water bill. But that aside, the sprinkler will add 20, $25,000 cost to just a small three bedroom home or a small office building. And the reality is that sprinkler will do more damage, or as much as the fire would. That’s one of the many regulations that people don’t realize that are in place.
Alan Stock 9:43
So I didn’t realize this either when I read the new call, are you saying that all new homes being built, it’s required that they have to have water sprinklers as part of the home.
Amy Groves 9:55
If you know, if it’s an attached home, yes, if it’s a free standing single family, it. Coming, but it’s not here yet. But attached product has been there for 20 years now with sprinklers,
Alan Stock 10:06
but they’re trying to get that also to be, to be part of homes that are not attached.
Amy Groves 10:13
Yes, correct, and it’s very expensive that sprinklers. Yeah, I don’t
Alan Stock 10:18
care if people want to put sprinklers in their home, but that we should be forced to have to do that, and this is part of the problem. So we’ve got that going on, and we’ve got the need to get land released. And the Listen, the Democrats were one time for releasing land, until we had our Republican congressman from Northern Nevada suggest that this, we should go ahead and do it, and then they opposed it all of a sudden. So, I mean, you know, it’s become a political football, instead of an issue of common sense,
Amy Groves 10:58
correct, and that land needs to be released. We need to come together, bipartisan and make it happen, because we’re out of land, right? We’re landlocked. We need some more land to get this going, and we need our elected officials to work together to make it happen.
Alan Stock 11:12
And the Fed owes over 85% of the land in Nevada, more than any other state, probably more than all the states put together, I would imagine, percentage wise, you talk about the fact that that there, we could possibly be heading toward a bust coming. What is that about?
Amy Groves 11:31
Well, there could be a bit of a bust. We’ve already seen about a 5% increase in the last 12 months. It’s probably going to go down another five to 10% is the crystal balls, just because it’s there’s not enough product to sell, and buyers don’t have the they don’t want to pay 6% in interest. So the prices have to keep coming down. So that 6% when they do, it makes sense for a monthly payment. So we’re going to see prices come down a little bit. I don’t think we’re going to crash, though.
Alan Stock 12:01
You do see the the interest rates coming down though this year, don’t you?
Amy Groves 12:06
I do what the feather predicted. If all goes well, another three cuts, we will see that trickle down to the mortgage. If all goes well, we should see the 5% and if you’re buying down a point, you might even see high fours that will absolutely spur real estate sales.
Alan Stock 12:24
Do you see us anytime, anytime in the foreseeable future, getting back to where people can get interest rates in the threes, maybe in the twos, possibly.
Amy Groves 12:36
I know our president is going to work hard at that, and I’m really optimistic that we’re going to see it, but it won’t be in the next 12 months. I think we’ll get to the high threes. I don’t think we’ll see twos again in my lifetime, but I’m really praying for that. Yeah.
Alan Stock 12:52
I mean, that only helps people go ahead.
Amy Groves 12:55
It is because so my house is at a 2% interest. I bought mine when it was great, but that same house now went up $200,000 and the interest rate tripled. So my $2,000 a month payment is now $7,000 for a new buyer. We have to get it more affordable, because that’s that’s not an affordable payment for, you know, 95% of the people here.
Alan Stock 13:17
That’s absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. Amy groves, director of the Coalition for housing freedom, I want to thank you for joining us as part of Nevada news and views. Thursday. If you want to find out more about Nevada news and views, go to Nevada news and views.com and absolutely great source anytime night or day for news and information locally, statewide and nationally as well. Great, great source, Chuck Muth has done a great job with it, and you’re a part of it. Amy and Amy, thanks so much for joining us this morning. I appreciate it, and you and I will do it again.
Amy Groves
Okay, great. Thank you. Alan.
