The most expensive condo sale in the Las Vegas area closed in early January for $21 million. If the sale of the 5,000-square-foot penthouse about 15 miles from the Las Vegas Strip had closed just a little more than a week earlier, it potentially could have saved the buyer a few hundred million dollars.

“He was looking for a while, and at the last minute, there was a little bit of a hiccup,” real estate agent Ivan Sher told Business Insider of the sale. “He was actually even under contract significantly before then.”

That “he” is billionaire Don Hankey, the chairman of Hankey Group and a lifelong Californian worth a reported $8.2 billion.

Hankey is one of a handful of Californians who have decided leave the state due to the proposed Billionaire Tax Act — a bill that would subject California residents worth more than $1 billion to a one-time tax worth 5% of their assets. For someone like Hankey, that’s about $410 million.

“I just felt a little bit like I wasn’t wanted,” Hankey told Forbes of why he chose to leave California.

While Hankey may still be on the hook for the billionaire tax — the bill will be on the ballot in November 2026 and would retroactively tax individuals who were living in California on January 1, 2026 if passed — Nevada has welcomed Hankey and other high-net-worth individuals with open arms.

For the ultrawealthy ready to ditch California, but not the West Coast, Nevada offers a happy medium. With tax perks similar to Florida’s — no income tax and low property taxes — Nevada is slowly becoming the next nerve center for the rich.

Nevada’s luxury market is growing

Sher, who repped Hankey’s $21 million penthouse sale on both sides as the founder of real estate agency IS Luxury, said that while Las Vegas’ luxury market was already heating up, the news out of California kicked it into a higher gear.

“If people were to ask me what percentage of my buyers were from California, I’d say probably about 25%, and then for the first few years after COVID, that number was closer to 80%,” Sher said. “As soon as that billionaire tax was proposed, the exodus began again — but at a much higher level.”

The Las Vegas metropolitan area had about 331 millionaire households in 2019, according to RentCafe data. In 2023, that number jumped 166% to 879 households.

Natalia Harris has been selling ultra-luxury real estate in the Las Vegas area for the last five years. In that time, she said the definition of “ultra-luxury” has changed in the Silver State.

“Back then, a home that was $10 million was ‘Wow’ for Vegas — that was at the top of the price point,” Harris told Business Insider. “Now we have three new listings that we just brought to market last week that are all between $11 million and $20 million.”

Zain Aziz, the founder of technology firm Atom and one of Harris’ high-net-worth clients, moved to the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nevada, in 2025. He said leaving the high taxes and hectic lifestyle of Silicon Valley behind was bittersweet.

“You don’t really want to get punished if you do good and you create more jobs,” Aziz said. “I believe the Las Vegas Valley has become more and more what’s synonymous with what California used to be — which was free-spirited and ‘Come and achieve the impossible,’” he added.

Aziz isn’t the only one taking his assets elsewhere. Google cofounder Sergey Brin recently spent $42 million on a Lake Tahoe home on the Nevada side, according to Bloomberg. Larry Page, Google’s other cofounder, found a tax haven on the East Coast, buying two properties totaling about $173 million in South Florida.

Billionaire Larry Ellison, who owns homes across the country and the world, bought a handful of properties in Lake Tahoe near the California-Nevada border. He also recently sold his San Francisco home for $45 million in the largest sale in the area in 2025, according to the San Francisco Standard.

Ultra-rich Californians would rather do business one state over

Has California lost its juice?

Aziz, who also moved his business to Nevada, said the culture that built California giants like Oracle and Google no longer exists there — it’s budding in the next state over.

“There’s no longer that innovative culture, and I believe where it exists is Vegas,” Aziz said. “I think that a lot of people from California who are chasing that are going to move to Vegas primarily because of the proximity to California.”

For lifelong Californians not fully ready to leave the state’s sunny weather and stellar beaches behind, Las Vegas is a less than two-hour flight to Los Angeles or San Francisco.

It also helps that certain areas of Nevada can offer a taste of home. Harris described the MacDonald Highlands neighborhood of Las Vegas, which is about 15 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip, as the Hollywood Hills of Vegas, offering stunning mountain views that give way to a sparkling cityscape beneath.

For Aziz, the developments in Nevada represent promise.

“This will become the hub for the wealthiest,” he said. “The city wants that.”

LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — The Girl Scouts of Southern Nevada kicked off their cookie season with a Mega Drop event at Cowabunga Bay on Saturday morning.

During the event, 29,629 cases, totaling 355,548 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies, were distributed to ensure local troops are fully stocked for the season.

Additional inventory was also distributed through the council office.

This annual event supports local Girl Scouts in building entrepreneurial, leadership, and goal-setting skills.

Cookie season is officially underway, offering a perfect opportunity to support local Girl Scouts by purchasing your favorite cookies.

Fourteen students from South Korea’s National University of Education (KNUE) visited the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Nevada, Reno at the start of the Spring 2026 semester. They visited several local schools and institutions to learn about the U.S. educational system and culture during the weeklong program.  These students are studying in teacher preparation programs in South Korea.  

During the week, the students visited several local public schools, including Doral Academy, Hug High School, Debbie Smith Academy and Herz Middle School. Students had a chance to tour each school and visit classrooms to get a firsthand look at how U.S. students learn. On the University campus, students sat in on several College of Education and Human Development courses throughout the week and visited the Child and Family Research Center. The students also visited the University’s Lake Tahoe campus. 

KNUE students enjoyed s’mores at the University’s Lake Tahoe campus.

For both universities, this program gives students and faculty the opportunity to collaboratively build a global perspective on education. By learning from each other’s ideas, both cultures can strengthen and grow their own education systems. And for KNUE, building this globalized, interconnected culture is a top priority. 

“I want our students to be interconnected with the University of Nevada, Reno,” said Joosang Lee, a KNUE faculty member who accompanied the students on the trip. “And then they will have an open mind about other people, other cultures and other countries.” 

“I went on this trip because I wanted to learn more about diversity around the world,” said Chaeyun Lee, a student studying music education at KNUE. “I wanted to meet people from all over the world and have conversations with them. And I wanted to learn how the U.S. education system works and how students communicate with their teachers and professors.” 

Cultivating connections among students has been an important part of the program. Several events throughout the week were held for both University of Nevada, Reno and KNUE students, where they had a chance to mingle while learning about each other’s cultures. The event organizers wanted to create opportunities for students to learn about each other’s broader cultures in a curious, inclusive space. 

“That’s something I really admire about our environment here,” said doctoral student Hanine Haidar, who helped coordinate this year’s program. “The way we don’t minimize people to just food, or singular elements of their culture, but we maximize them by accepting them for who they are.” 

The program was first established by an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) signed between University of Nevada, Reno President Brian Sandoval and Korea National University of Education President Kim Jongwoo in late 2023, and the first visit by South Korean students was held in January 2024. Each year since, students from both universities have visited each other’s countries and institutions.

In May, several University of Nevada, Reno students will visit KNUE. This program gives an opportunity for this year’s cohort of University of Nevada, Reno students to meet the South Korean students now, so they will already have connections when they visit South Korea in March 2026.  

“This program has provided excellent opportunities for our future teachers to experience diverse educational settings and cultures, enhance their understanding of different educational approaches and build friendships through interactions with pre-service teachers from two different countries,” said Hyun-Joo Jeon, Ph.D., professor of Human Development and Family Science, who developed and led the short-term exchange program.

(From left to right) Mehmet Tosun, Joosang Lee, Man Seob Lee, Mihyun Koh, Hyun-Joo Jeon, Ramya Fernandez and Dean Donald Easton-Brooks.

“It was very important for us to create events where these students would get to interact a lot over this week, so that when our students go to South Korea, they have some connections that they made from their visit here,” said Ramya Fernandez, CPA, MPH, assistant dean of operations, who helped coordinate this year’s program.