It’s official! Welcome Tesla Motors

News by Guy Johnson

Just in case you’ve somehow missed the news, this afternoon Nevada’s Governor Sandoval announced that the State had reached an agreement with Tesla Motors to build a “Gigafactory” battery factory just outside Reno. Needless to say the “Biggest Little City” is abuzz with excitement.

Here is a roundup of some of the news pieces…

9 comments

  1. Bob

    Will this be good?

  2. SMcGuire45

    Hi Guy,

    I’m a longtime reader (since Diane started the blog) and I was curious what you think the Tesla Gigafactory will do for the Reno housing market, if any impact at all?

    Thanks

  3. Guy Johnson

    Well, definitely the proposed Tesla Motors Gigawatt factory will impact local housing, and in a positive way. To what magnitude will be the impact is more difficult to predict.

    One of the RGJ pieces above (see Inside Nevada’s $1.25 billion Tesla tax deal) states that

    The factory would employ 6,500 people with an average wage about $25 an hour. Indirect jobs created could reach 22,000—a number equivalent to 2 percent of the state’s entire work force and 11 percent of the region’s workforce.

    That is A LOT of new jobs for our area. Of course these positions will not be filled all at once — in the stories above it sounds as though the factory itself will not be completed for three years and the new jobs (construction workers, factory employees, and other) will be generated through 2020.
    How many of these new positions will be filled by people currently living in the area? And how many will be filled by people relocating to the Reno-Sparks area and needing a place to live over the next several years? The answers to these questions, and others, are needed in order to begin to assess the impact to the local housing market.

    Just to lend some perspective though, in the Reno-Sparks market…

    • 6,099 houses sold in 2012
    • 6,081 houses sold in 2013
    • and year-to-date ~4,000

    Whatever figure you decide to use for the number of new people relocating to the area over the next several years, it’s easy to see that there will definitely be an increase in home sales.

    And it sounds as though some of this is already happening. In the International Business Times piece above, it was stated that “40 to 50 upscale homes have been recently scouted by Reno real estate brokers, presumably for the construction managers who will be moving to town to oversee the Gigafactory project.”

  5. SMcGuire45

    Thanks Guy for the reply…it will be interesting to see how this all plays out in our area. Exciting times for the region!

  6. Jaded

    Ask any homeowner. Their house’s value jumped 10% Friday at 4:15 PM.

  7. ove to Reno?

    Damn it!!! I knew I should have bought some Reno real estate in 2010.

    Where is the dancing bear now?

  8. Twister

    In a cave somewhere.

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