Christopher DeVargas
Bill Donnelly, a tenant in Henderson, benefits from a good relationship with his landlord, Tom Trout. “I’ve never met a man like this in my life and I’m preparing to turn 78,” said Donnelly.
Friday, September 10, 2021 | 2 a.m
Despite the real estate boom, bankruptcy and breakneck development, landlord Tom Trout has run his business the only way he knows.
“I’ll do it my way, as Frank Sinatra says,” said Trout, 71, referring to the late Las Vegas Rat Pack singer.
For tenant Bill Donnelly, a disabled Vietnam War veteran, Trout’s path over the years has resulted in an unexpected drop in rent.
“I’ve never met a man like this in my life, and I’m about to turn 78,” said Donnelly, who has been renting a four bedroom, 2.5 bathroom home from Trout in Henderson for nearly a decade.
When he moved in, Donnelly was paying $ 1,200 a month for the 1,600-square-foot property. The rent dropped to $ 1,100 the next year and $ 1,000 a year later.
The year after? You guessed it. Donnelly’s rent fell to $ 900 a month and has stayed there ever since. Real estate website Zillow estimates the rent on the property at $ 2,195 a month. Similar sized properties in the same zip code are rented for $ 2,000 to $ 2,400, according to Zillow.
The situation is similar for apartment rentals, which rose 18% in southern Nevada from the end of the second quarter of 2020 to June 30, according to the Nevada State Apartment Association. Susy Vasquez, managing director of the association, expects rents in the Las Vegas area to continue to rise at least until the end of the year.
But Trout has no plans to raise Donnelly’s rent. Trout said his plan is to keep long-standing, reliable tenants rather than going through a revolving door of tenants.
“I’ve seen bubbles and I’ve gone through balloons and the balloon pops and the bubble pops,” said Trout, who has rented properties for more than 40 years. “So I am fully aware of what I am doing.”
Last summer, when house prices were rising, Donnelly feared Trout might be tempted to sell the house, so he offered to pay more rent.
The trout’s answer? No, the house wasn’t for sale and he threatened to bring the rent down to $ 800 if Donnelly tried to give him any more money.
“He’s a veteran,” said Trout. “I admire him. He served our country. And why should a landlord destroy the house he lives in?”
The compromise, Donnelly said, is that he will pay for minor repairs by handyman. But when Donnelly’s air conditioning failed in the middle of summer, “it was taken care of in a snap,” he said.
“If you live in one of my houses, it is your home,” he said of his tenants. “And that’s why you feel like a homeowner.”
Trout said he had owned his property long enough to be able to afford to be generous. He moved to the area in 1978 and started buying houses with the money he made in the stock market, he said.
“I just kept buying houses,” said Trout, who has a degree in geology and now lives in Pahrump. He didn’t want to say how many properties he owns.
Despite the financial hardships the coronavirus pandemic brought, none of its tenants missed a payment, Trout said. He didn’t want to reveal whether he reduced or increased the rent for other tenants.
The relationship Trout has with his tenants allows him to focus on the things that are important to him back home in Pahrump: playing drums for a band at a local club, trading stocks and exploring the geology, that Pahrump and Southern Nevada have to offer.
He said he hadn’t been to Las Vegas in more than a year to check his homes. And he didn’t want it any other way.
Bryan Horwath of the Sun contributed to this report.
