@Aaron Klatt I am by no means an expert in Reno so I can't honesty comment on which has more growth but last numbers I heard for Vegas was over $30 Billion in on-going and proposed projects expected to break ground.

Consider at Blockbuster’s peak, they had 9,000 stores, 60,000 employees and an $8 billion dollar valuation.

https://www.har.com/content/newsroom/Houston Real Estate Highlights in July: Single-family home sales rose 9.1 percent year-over-year, with 8,108 units sold;Days on Market (DOM) for single-family homes remained unchanged at 48 days;Total property sales increased 8.5 percent, with 9,559 units sold;Total dollar volume jumped 11.4 percent to nearly $2.8 billion;The single-family home median price rose 5.9 percent to $243,500, reaching a July high;The single-family home average price also achieved a July record, rising 2.4 percent to $305,910;Single-family homes months of inventory was at a 4.2-months supply, down fractionally from 4.3 months last July, but nonetheless at the highest level since August 2017;Townhome/condominium sales rose 6.1 percent, with the average price up 6.9 percent to $215,110 and the median price up 9.3 percent to $165,000;Leases of single-family homes fell 1.9 percent with the average rent up 5.6 percent to $1,916;Volume of townhome/condominium leases dropped 6.6 percent with the average rent up 7.7 percent to $1,666.

This tenant's team has done billions in sales and acquisitions.

One idea I always keep in the back of my mind is one quote from Ross Perot, where he said if you want to make a billion dollars in real estate, buy in the path of progress.One thing you might want to consider is using a property manager if you buy multifamily and want to live in one of the units. 

Federal Government is in 22 trillion dollars of debt adding 4 billion a day.     

We loaned about $1 Billion last year, most of which were to LLCs. 

In my experience, for a ground up, high risk deal like this it would be a waterfall like the following;-  8% preferred return for investor- return of investor capital- catch up contribution to sponsor to equal 8% of their investment- something like 30-70 split till 15% IRR- 50-50 after thatThere would be some 2-5% sponsor fees off the top.That is what you can get from an experienced sponsor with decades of success and billions in management   If you want some examples check out the PPM on CrowdStreet or RealCrowd to see real life examples.

Here's an example: look at how much of the job growth in SF is based on companies that lose billions of dollars a year and have no chance of ever making money.

The premise is that the hedge funds did their homework before plopping down a billion $, and they know what neighborhoods they are willing to invest in.