Las Vegas is very close to getting an NBA team.
League owners gave the green light in March, voting to move forward on expansion bids for Las Vegas and Seattle, with the Vegas franchise expected to command the steeper price tag of the two, somewhere between $8 billion and $10 billion.
Five ownership groups are already in the mix: a bid tied to Golden Knights owner Bill Foley, a partnership between Joshua Kushner and former Disney chief Bob Iger, the Las Vegas Jacks group fronted by Hall of Fame executive Jerry Colangelo, Marc Lasry, who once owned the Milwaukee Bucks, and Magic Johnson’s MAGI investment group. League officials are hoping to have a team on the floor for the 2028-29 season.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has made the case that the wait has already been worthwhile, noting that Las Vegas has practically “operated as our 31st team for 22 years” through the Summer League alone.
For a city that has absorbed two major franchise arrivals in the last decade, the questions this raises are familiar. What happens to home values near a new arena. What relocating players actually look for. Who gets it right and who doesn’t.
Gavin Ernstone, founder of Simply Vegas and a luxury agent in the market since 1994, has answered versions of these questions twice already, first with the Golden Knights in 2017, then the Raiders in 2020.
What Did the Golden Knights Actually Teach Las Vegas About Selling to Athletes?
Franchise arrivals bring a wave of relocating players who need somewhere to live, fast, and who arrive with their own assumptions about what a home search should look like.
Gavin Ernstone sold houses to Golden Knights players when the team landed in 2017, and the lesson that stuck wasn’t about the arena at all.
“Being very, very close to the practice facility was the most important thing. Being able to get there in five minutes,” he says, noting that arenas like T-Mobile or Allegiant Stadium sit in the middle of town and are accessible from almost anywhere, but players aren’t there every day. The practice facility is.
That’s a detail a generalist agent has no reason to know, and an NBA expansion team will hand a fresh batch of players the same problem the moment a practice facility site gets announced.
What Should a Relocating NBA Player Look for in a Las Vegas Real Estate Agent?
Gavin Ernstone’s read on athlete clients cuts against a common assumption too: that every player on a roster is a maximum-contract buyer.
“There are plenty of players on that team that are at the lower income ranges. When I say lower, two, three hundred thousand a year. They’re not on twenty, thirty million dollar contracts,” he says of a recent Raiders client roster. NBA rosters carry the same range. A meaningful share of any team earns close to league minimum, and a buyer in that bracket needs a completely different conversation about budget than a max-contract teammate does.
Privacy carries equal weight. Ernstone treats athletes and entertainers the way he’d treat a family member, handled with discretion rather than steered toward whatever listing carries the biggest commission. Off-market access, guard-gated communities, and title held through an entity rather than a personal name all matter more to a relocating player than square footage does.
How Does Gavin Ernstone Fit Into the NBA’s Potential Wave of Athlete Buyers in Las Vegas?
Gavin Ernstone has sold real estate in Las Vegas since 1994, building Simply Vegas into a brokerage of more than 600 agents and personally closing over $1.3 billion in career sales at an average transaction near $3.6 million. He has represented professional athletes through two major franchise arrivals already.
An NBA team gives Las Vegas a third data point in the same experiment. The city keeps adding franchises, keeps drawing relocating players and executives, and keeps testing the same question: does a new team change the real estate market, or just add another reason people were already moving here. Ernstone’s answer, twice over, has been the same. It changes who’s buying and what they need. It doesn’t change the math.
