Touchstone Gets OK for 80 Townhomes in Southeast Las Vegas

Touchstone Living got a green light to build 80 townhomes in southeast Las Vegas for first-time homeowners in one of the top 20 most expensive markets in the nation.

The locally based developer was approved by the Clark County Commission to build the two- and three-story townhomes east of Durango Drive, between Robindale and Warm Springs roads, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

The developer bought the 5 acres of desert land for the homes this month for $6.4 million, or $1.3 million an acre. The seller was undisclosed.

Tom McCormick, founder of Touchstone, said he plans to break ground this year.

The townhomes are expected to cost around $400,000, targeted at first-time homebuyers.

Greater Las Vegas is the 19th least affordable metro market for housing in the U.S., more expensive than Denver, Phoenix and Tampa Bay, according to a report from Redfin, which ranked regions based on the share of income needed to buy a typical home.

The median home price in Las Vegas is $439,359, which works out to a $2,870 monthly mortgage payment. The median household income in the area is $77,943, which means a typical family must spend 44.2 percent of their monthly income on their mortgage.

“Demand for housing in Las Vegas has increased as more people from coastal metros like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle have moved into the metro,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist for Redfin, told the Review-Journal.

“Those newcomers can afford the high price of housing, but local wages have not increased as much as housing costs,” she said. “Development of new housing has improved in recent years, but it’s not enough to meet demand.”

The demand may be exacerbated by thousands of refugees burned out of their homes in firestorms this month in Los Angeles County, priced out of a tight housing market

Las Vegas buyers bought 31,300 homes on the resale market last year, according to Las Vegas Realtors. That’s up from about 29,000 homes in 2023, the slowest sales year since 2008.

But that’s far below the record 50,000 sales in 2021, when rock-bottom borrowing costs spurred a home buying binge in Las Vegas and across the nation.

Touchstone Living, founded by McCormick in 2012, aims to make homeownership accessible to first-time buyers. Its developments include Independence, a 1,600-unit project on the former Royal Links golf course in East Las Vegas,; and Solaris, an 84-unit townhome development now under construction at 9180 West Russell Road, near the 215 Beltway.

— Dana Bartholomew