The market keeps humming along...
 

The Utah market continues to bustle along. There was a house that went up for sale in my neighborhood (East bench of SLC). It just sold for $450,000. That blew my mind simply because this is not a huge house. It was a 2500 square foot, 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom home sitting on .22 acres. Yes, it was nicely remodeled but it still surprised me that it sold so quickly (in 2 days) and it sold at a price that I thought was probably 5% overpriced.

Anyway, the Utah market will slow down, but I don't see a bubble anytime soon though.

Utah has got a lot of scared money flowing into it from California and Nevada. I hope it stays reasonable there.

A good friend of mine who is a realtor has told me that Utah will always have a strong housing market it's just a steady climb that has never really spiked.

I don't trust realtors as far as I can throw them. I work with brokers everyday on the commercial side of things and they all have silver tongues. At least the good ones anyway.

New home starts are down. So exsting home sales should see a rise. But prices are leveling off. A lot of money has moved in from out of state where the housing boom was more pronounced than in Utah. But that will slow considerably as those areas have cooled and a price correction is being made. I'd disagree that the Utah market has had steady growth. The spike may not have been as drastic as in California but it was hardly steady either. Even with some of the new business and the Church's rennovation of downtown I still don't believe that Utah has enough jobs to sustain the growth. In fact I have friends who work in short sales and pre-foreclosure deals who are making substantial amounts of money. And they are excited. If they're excited, it's because the market is turning.

Your friend is kidding himself. Are you all going to live in million dollar homes eventually? Realtors always say what they need to say. I should forward you some quotes from realtors here over the past 2 years who said the same thing. California's market is pulling back and Utah's market was very undervalued. I'd bank on Utah peaking in the next year or so as your market was driven by clearly undervalued properties.

The Utah market depends on a lot of things. The East bench of SLC has been pretty bulletproof over the past 15 years. Even when the SLC market was brutal for years in the 90s, the east bench kept creeping along at a 4-7% clip while the rest of the valley was in the 0-4%. The huge increase in the past 2 years will not continue much longer and it will fall back to that sub 10% range.

The areas that are in danger, in my opinion, is the newer homes areas of Herriman, South Jordan, etc. I think so because there are SO MANY new homes and new homes still going in and the homes are priced in the $400,000...that in 5 years it will get to the point of: Are people really ready to spend $500,000 for a 5-10 year old home that is a long way from downtown SLC? I really don't know and that demand may stay for a long time but there are so many new homes going up that people will be deciding to buy a brand new home in the same relative area or to buy a 10 year old home for the same price in the same area.

The east bench of SLC can't grow anymore, is close to downtown and there is always a demand because of the lack of finding new ground. The next 5 years will be interesting to see how the valley holds up.

Just curious but why not build up west of downtown (magna)..... You could probably improve the water...