What if a gingerbread house could prevent a real home from going into foreclosure?
That’s the idea behind a fundraiser by Freed’s Bakery and homebuilder Taylor Morrison. The Build Joy program donates $1,000 for every $55 gingerbread house kit Freed’s sells to HomeFree USA, a Maryland-based, HUD-approved national nonprofit that assists homeowners to prevent foreclosures.
While those donations will funnel out to needy families across the country, the foreclosure issue hits close to home. According to an October 2025 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report from the ATTOM Data Solutions analytics company, Nevada ranked fifth in the country with a filing for one in every 2,747 housing units.
Nic Irwin, research director at UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate, helped compile a June report on Las Vegas metro area notices of default (NODs)—a precursor to a foreclosure filing—which found they were up 28%
through the first half of 2025.
“It really is a wild time in the housing market. We’re seeing so many warning signs about foreclosures, evictions and unemployment rates going up, while tourism numbers are down and fewer big construction projects are getting started at the same level,” Irwin says. “There’s nothing within the larger economic picture that suggests this is going to turn around anytime soon.”
Those factors—combined with a surging metro population, a housing market that’s in “a bit of a freeze” and a rising cost of living that far outpaces the “blue-collar” wages that Irwin says still dominate our economy—have created a “real mismatch.”
After an influx of new residents moved here during and after the pandemic, overall demand has noticeably softened in 2025, which has shifted the market in favor of buyers, he says. This has made it more difficult for local homeowners to sell their homes quickly to escape the threat of foreclosure.
“Typically, if you’re facing foreclosure, you’ll try to list your house, even if it’s for a little bit of a discount. But because there’s so little demand in town, those people don’t have as many options as they did a couple of years ago,” Irwin says.
These discrepancies aren’t evenly disbursed. Of the 74 ZIP codes in Southern Nevada, ten alone represented more than a third of all local NOD filings in the first half of the year, according to Irwin’s research. Filings tend to coalesce around “lower-income, higher minority areas” like East Las Vegas and portions of North Las Vegas, he says.
For those who are facing foreclosure, renting as an alternative isn’t as practical as it once was, either. A September Lied Center report found that Nevada’s share of excessively cost-burdened renters—those who pay more than 35% of their income for housing—was second to California at just over 47%.
Partnerships like the one between Taylor Morrison and Freed’s Bakery look to help chip away at a national foreclosure landscape that was up 32% year-over-year in October, according to ATTOM. But the urgency in Nevada is particularly high due to its reliance on tourism.
“We’re always susceptible here to any sort of economic downturn because 40% of us are economically tied to tourism. With fewer folks coming here, that means fewer people need to be employed, which isn’t a good place to be,” Irwin says.
Nonprofits and charitable campaigns can help plug that leak, to some degree. But Irwin says there’s a clear need for more reliable, long-term foreclosure prevention efforts. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had long been a key resource there, but the Trump Administration has spent much of the year downsizing the department dramatically.
“States can provide some resources, but those probably aren’t at the level they should be, because we always understaff those components,” Irwin says.
On November 30, the Nevada Affordable Housing Assistance Corporation put a pause on accepting new applications for its Nevada Homeowner Assistance Fund due to waning funds after already providing almost $23 million to help 1,400 low-income Nevadans with mortgage payments through the third quarter of 2025.
Of the limited resources that remain, the state’s Nevada Foreclosure Mediation Program mediates negotiations between homeowners and their lenders to help them stay in their homes, while the local nonprofit Community Services Of Nevada offers free foreclosure prevention counseling services. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development also offers some foreclosure avoidance support at the federal level.
For those who want to support Freed’s Bakery’s fundraiser, owner Max Jacobson-Fried says the gingerbread house kits are currently “pre-order only” and available via the website (freedsbakery.com). Orders can be picked up at any of five Valley locations, delivered locally or shipped nationwide.
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