Aida Markarian: From Wall Street to the Las Vegas Housing Market
Aida Markarian spent the first chapter of her career as a stockbroker before making the move into real estate in the late 1980s. She founded Elite Realty in 1991, at a time when the Las Vegas Valley was on the cusp of a population boom that would reshape its residential and commercial landscape for the next three decades. What began as a small independent brokerage has endured through the savings-and-loan aftermath, the explosive growth of the mid-2000s, the 2008 housing collapse — where Las Vegas was among the hardest-hit metro areas in the country — and the pandemic-era surge that followed. Through all of it, Elite Realty remained independently owned and continuously operated under Markarian’s leadership, making it one of the longest-running independent brokerages in Southern Nevada.
Elite Realty operates two company-owned offices in the Las Vegas Valley. The main office sits at 7942 West Sahara Avenue, near the intersection with Buffalo Drive on the west side — a commercial corridor that has anchored professional services firms since the 1990s. A second office on South Eastern Avenue serves the Henderson and southeast Las Vegas market. The brokerage provides full-service residential and commercial real estate, including buying, selling, property management, and relocation services. With over thirty-five years in the valley, Elite Realty’s agent roster draws on deep local knowledge of neighborhoods ranging from Summerlin master-planned communities to established pockets of central Las Vegas and the rapidly developing southwest corridor.
Elite Realty in the Las Vegas Valley
The Las Vegas real estate market is one of the most volatile and opportunity-rich in the western United States, driven by steady inbound migration from California, a tourism economy that supports a large rental market, and a tax structure that attracts retirees and business owners. Navigating that market over the course of thirty-five years — through cycles that wiped out many competing brokerages — requires the kind of institutional knowledge that only comes from staying in the same market under the same ownership. Elite Realty’s longevity is itself a credential, reflecting a brokerage that has adapted to each phase of the valley’s growth without abandoning the independent, client-focused model Aida Markarian built from the start.
- Owner
- Aida Markarian
- Founded
- 1991
- Address
- 7942 W Sahara Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89117
- Phone
- (702) 228-7227
- Website
- eliterealty.net