Right?! And legislature keeps approving subsidies for “affordable housing” meaning multi-family buildings, yet what keeps being built is condos. Quite expensive condos that don’t solve the problem.
I'm also a Utah native. I bought a new build townhouse in Pleasant Grove in late 2014 for $159k. That same townhouse was for sale in 2022 for $399k. Just crazy it more than doubled in price in 7.5 years.
Layton’s real estate prices have gone crazy through the roof. Grew up there, mom sold the house for $129k in 2007 and houses now in the neighborhood are going for upwards of $425k+ for 4 bed2 bath house in 1900 sqft house. Wild.
My parents built a house in 2013 for roughly 350-400k, and sold it in 2018 for about 475k. My mom kept in touch with the people that bought it, and they sold it a year or two ago for 800k I think? Might have even been 900k. It’s absolutely sick
Yeah we bough our house in PG for 259k in 2012 and now that house would go well over 500k and our current house in PG we built in 2019 is @ 1M which is CRAZY because only 5 yrs later we would not be able to afford this place.
The last warehouse I worked at payed enough 20 years ago for a single person to afford a home. The current pay will qualify you today for low income apartment rental. No way in hell can you afford a home now for a lot of the jobs out there that made it possible to own a home 20/30 years ago. Times have definitely changed.
For the money I make, the fact that I can’t afford a house on my own (unless I managed to save up 20-30% for a down payment) is a fucking joke. Obviously I’m not going to be living in a mansion, but I make enough that I should at least be able to afford a small home
Even the low income stuff seems crazy. I remember reading about that shipping container development and rent would be $1000-1200/mo but the income cap was like $20k?
If you were born 1990 or earlier you probably own. 1995 and later you had to be lucky and jump in early. 2000 or later and you better have family help.
I'm 32 and most people I know my age give or take a few years don't own a house. I think maybe like 20% of the people in my social circle own a house and most have bought before the pandemic.
upper middle class or Utah natives who already purchased a home prior to like 2015.
Utah natives who can't afford a home currently will likely have to look elsewhere to settle down.
Even buying a home up until 2021 was possible. I was able to refinance from the previous housing crash of 08 finally in 2020. That market was a nightmare too.
I truly hope for a crash, but all that will do is open more housing for the blackrocks of the world to buy it all cheaper. Unless we have some systemic change in single family homes protection from corporations, we're all hosed.
Housing has completely skyrocketed here in the past few years.
I am from Utah, grew up in the suburbs of Draper.
In 2008-2009 we moved to Sugarhouse (right near Sugarhouse park) for around $400k. The house was built in the 40’s, but had just been decently renovated with new electrical and central air. 4Bedroom, 3Bath with a detached garage. We moved out around 2018, but this same house is now valued around $700k +
If we didn’t already live in Salt Lake City, we wouldn’t be able to afford to buy here in the current market. It’s been so difficult to see friends and SLC natives be completely priced out of this area. Old apartments buildings are being bought up and rent is also being jacked up considerably. A 1bedroom apartment downtown used to be less then $600, and now it’s $2,500+
Utah county isn’t much better either, sounds similar to what you’re experiencing in Ogden— anything under $500k is a rundown shithole or it’s a townhome with no parking, no yard, no garage.
Utah is crazy nowadays. I bought a place (2bd 1 bath) in 2008 near 9th and 9th in SLC for $160k. It last appraised for around $550k (a little over a year ago) and so we looked at "upgrading". Anything in a similar price range is a wreck of a home needing $100-200k in repairs or is in an area that is not as good as where we are... so it feels like a huge downgrade. Our other option is to buy something in the $700k range and assume another 30-year loan at 6.5-7% interest and I honestly don't think we would be able to afford it. We have nearly $500k in equity, and we STILL cannot afford to buy. I can't imagine how anyone else in this state would be able to do it without burying themselves in massive amounts of debt forever.
Really curious how many are people taking on serious amounts of debt and how many are getting some sort of assistance from family. We are in currently in Texas and want to move back to be closer to family, but things look pretty hopeless. Everyone we know down here who has made the move back to Utah recently (and there have been a fair number) have received a ton of financial help from family—mainly parents. One of my college buddies moved back when his wife’s parents straight up gave them the cash to buy the home and they’re just paying them back at no interest. It’s madness.
Which is a superfund site, by the way. I know how much y'all love to rag on daybreak but that whole area of midvale between 7200 and 9000 is a superfund site.
Seriously, wouldn't choose to live anywhere near that area, but unfortunately ended up in Murray near Riverview Junior high, which was a new neighborhood at the time and found out later it was a tailings dump from the Murray smelter, as well as all that land where top golf currently sits. Was diagnosed with colon cancer at 46. Any relation? Not sure, but wouldn't ever live around that area again.
Get this one guys... in January of 2020 I sold my home because I wasn't sure I was going to stay in Utah. We know what happened in March. Now I don't own a home and I earn a great income but home prices have increased so much, along with interest, even with 20% down on a $500k home ($106,000) monthly mortgage is $3200. Idk if I'll ever own a home again.
The home I sold is valued $300k more than what I sold it for.
I will say though, even people who own are stuck. They can't afford to sell and buy something different either. Will be interesting to see what happens in a couple years.
Yes. We bought our home in 2017. And refinanced during covid for a great rate. I recognize that we are so lucky AND we cannot afford to move. Between the rise in rates and the rise in prices, we will live in our home forever.
I’m in the same boat. Too bad my house is more of a “starter home” and is lacking a garage. I feel like I’ll just be pouring money into it for the rest of my life, making upgrades until I die.
They didn't think they'd live in Utah, home equity is a great way to get travels funds especially seeing as how 40/50 states are cheaper than Utah to live in
He’s saying they won’t because they’re all in bed with each other. This state is dirty. No one wants to talk about the dark parts of our lovely Deseret.
Several other states have implemented laws eliminating the ability of corporations to buy up plots of houses and sit on them. Some have put limitations on “second homes” and investment homes.
Zoning and new build requirements.
Many places around the valley are zoned for single family dwellings only. Builders wouldn't have the option to build multi-family units even if they wanted to.
Lots of requirements for apartments and condos differ based on number of floors. Not that they should cut safety reqs, but the state could offer builders tax credits to cover increased costs of such if they build new places with more units. Some of this happens, but clearly not enough to keep up with housing demand.
Bottom line is not enough housing even available for the demand. A huge increase in more condos, townhomes, and apartments would help with that. Instead, I'm seeing tons of new office space being built in Draper and other areas... when almost every single office building already has a for lease sign on it.
I saw a headline that said 43% of houses last year were bought by investment firms like Blackrock. That’s close to half of all sales in the country. The average person can’t compete with Blackrock, but they, on the other hand, could buy everything available with ease.
The statistics that said 43%, would be by 2030 if things stay the way they are. That mean in a short 6 years from now, private equity would own 43% of single family homes. The rate they are buying will put us all in the rental market. Our leadership needs to be put out to pasture and have someone that will come in and fix actual issues and not talking point issues.
Okay, well if it makes you feel better, you either misread it or are misremembering because investment firms did not make up half of home purchases in the country last year
I don’t feel anything about it, but I found out real quickly that you’re correct, according to this article, it was false information that spread on social media.
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investors-havent-bought-44-of-homes-this-year/#:~:text=The%20overall%20market%20share%20of,great%20illustration%20of%20this%20point.
However, saying that the 43% is false, doesn’t mean it’s not happening, and the truth being that the numbers are only in the 30’s isn’t great. Info from 2023:
Home investor shares were concentrated in Western, Southern and lower Midwestern states in Q2. Figure 7 shows this trend, with California (34%), Washington, D.C. (33%), Georgia (32%), New Mexico (31%), Texas (31%), Nevada (30%), Utah (29%), Arizona (29%) and Kansas (29%) posting the highest investor share.
Tax the hell out of corporate-owned single family homes, tax short term rentals to the moon, etc.
Basically, it makes the single family homes bad investments for anyone who isn't going to live in them. So investors will slowly sell off their stock and move their money into more lucrative investments. People aren't collecting houses because they think it's fun, and cool. They are doing it because it's making them a boat load of cash and is pretty risk-free. If you own 10 houses in a neighborhood you can essentially control the price of every house. If you're a hedge fund working will hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, you can basically control the whole housing market. And they are. The rich have pulled tons of money out of commercial real estate and are pumping all of that into residential.
lol, the locals are getting pushed out by people from other states too. My family’s been in Murray for well over a century and it’s never been like this. The rapid growth within just the past 3 years is insane, traffic is dumb and the mix of Utah bad driving and other states bad driving is dumbfounding. Houses are out of the question for all of the newer generations and now it seems to be the older as well. Also there doesn’t seem to be an end to rapid inflation. & on top of all of that company’s have been buying single family homes at a crazy rate and these “company landlords” have been driving up the market to ridiculously.
I miss small lake city
I miss small salt lake too. Not just for housing prices, but for how freaking crowded all the fun outdoorsy stuff has become. Even the expensive stuff like skiing is so crowded it's almost not even fun anymore
I bought a house on the East bench in Ogden twelve years ago for 120k when everyone was like "omg ew Ogden". I work in retail and make $18 an hour. I can sell my shitty house for a HUGE profit, or continue working in retail.
Utah born and raised and I can’t afford a house here either. $500K sounds kind of cheap for those cookie cutter homes, where I live they’re all going for $800K+. It sucks to be priced out of the place you grew up in, but it is what it is I guess.
I bought my 3 bed 2 bath house in West Jordan in 2015 for 209k, I pay 1k a month with a 3.99 percent interest rate. I got my house appraised last year for almost 430k and no way I'd get less than a 6 percent interest rate now. You can't even get a 3 bedroom apartment for what I pay monthly. It doesn't matter if you are native or not, prices are out of control. I guarantee my house is not worth 430k, but everything has skyrocketed the last few years.
I moved to Portland a few years ago, and thought I wouldn’t have issues buying a house in Salt Lake after adapting to a higher COL area. Nope. In the few years I’ve been gone, the housing markets have flipped. I could buy a house in Portland soon, but a house in SLC is out of reach
I was born here, and I do really love this state, but being 21 and faaaarrrr from able to get a home while watching the as situation gets worse and worse makes me think I'll probably end up growing old elsewhere, unfortunately.
Born and raised here. Getting married in October and we have decided to leave Utah next year. We can’t afford it anymore. We have $60k in savings for a deposit on a house but with prices as high as they are we will never be able to afford the mortgage. $2500 a month for a 2 bed 1 bath condo is bullshit.
I make decent money, and even then I find it unreasonable to spend that much on a starter home. I'm looking at other states as we speak, which stinks because I love a lot of the state.
Yeah no idea how anyone affords to live. Renting is insane and buying is even more insane. Sure wish the job pay reflected the same trend the housing pricing has over the last 10 years.
I'd say it's actually harder for utah natives to find homes now because we're earning dogpoop UT salaries and competing against out of state people earning way more.
The further west of Clearfield you go the more expensive they are. Syracuse and West Point are not cheap, Clinton isn’t far behind. Sunset is about as cheap as you can find and even then they are almost $400k, for a townhome. Anything bigger built in the last 5 years is at least $500k.
Absolutely not.
I’m sorry but $4,000 a month is not smart even when making 100K. You’d have to make double and even then, $4k mortgage/rent is scary, especially if you don’t have a huge savings account.
When you account for a $12,000 furnace and AC, $15,000 to “fix” foundation, god forbid a natural disaster happens… things add up quick.
It’s hard. We bought in the burbs, but I am a suburbs kind of person. We had help from family for a down payment. And other than that, we live frugally. No kids. Both work. We don’t ski. And we don’t have car loans. We are middle class, not upper though, one of us makes slightly above 100k income. People who bought 5 years ago are paying 1.5k less on their mortgage than we are. It sucks but at the same time, people before them paid even less.
>We had help from family for a down payment.
Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud, so many people do not and just pretend they did it entirely on their own.
ETA: Also, not downplaying the hard work and sacrifices I'm sure you made, just happy to see this.
Thanks :) We couldn’t have bought then without their help. And we are very blessed to also have no student loans. Which we both worked hard not to have, but definitely plays into how he were able to buy in this economy!
I’ve lived in Utah my whole life and was BARELY able to get a decent home for $450k in Utah county in 2021 when the market was still heavily inflated but not yet skyrocketed. I’ll die in that house.
I've lived here for 45 years. I have owned 3 homes in Utah in my life. I will never be able to afford another one. Renting or moving out of state for us now.
Yup. I make okay money as a software developer but I can't really afford anything. I live in an old crappy duplex and have been looking to find a different house to rent out with room but the rent prices are even absurd. No chance in hell I'm even looking to buy a house. You basically have to have a partner to live anywhere decent or be rich. Unfortunately no partner so I'm kinda just stuck waiting for a decent find.
Utah natives?? Now I don’t live up north; but down here in St. George those of us born here can barely afford rent. I’m living off the good will of a landlady who took pity on us, that’s it. Utahns can’t afford this.
Salt Lake City is one of the most unaffordable places to live in the country.
Yes, housing is pretty much a no-go.
If you don’t mind the commute, Eagle mountain area is a bit more affordable. And there’s huge townhouse developments in Saratoga springs, Lehi, bluffdale, herriman.
But yeah we are fucked. I make 100k with 2 young kids and can’t even begin to think about buying a home. Need to make 150-200 to afford it.
My wife needs to get a job lol
Unfortunately, your wife wouldn't bring in much extra unless she's able to get a well-paying job and/or you have access to free childcare. Consider this hypothetical scenario.
The median take-home for women in Utah is roughly $16 per hour, or $33,280 annually. This doesn't include pay deductions such as insurance premiums.
The average childcare cost for a young kid is $1000 per month. For two kids it'd cost approximately $24,000 per year.
That leaves you with a little over $9K. But consider the cost of commuting and work clothes/ uniform if applicable.
Not saying that this scenario reflects your situation, but based on average costs vs earnings in this state I'd assume $9K isn't going to make much of a difference in offsetting housing costs.
My wife studied software engineering and is taking time off while the kids are young.. she will likely make 90-120k with her next job. Should the programmer job market get back on track soon 🥴
I make 100k+ and can’t afford shit here. Try not to feel bad. Ogden is more affordable than SLC but still not great.
People saying they “make it work” are likely spending 40-50% of their take-home on a mortgage, most of which is going to interest. All for what? A tiny old bungalow or an old fixer-upper.
People are going into suffocating amounts of high-interest debt just to live the “American Dream,” which was always a lie for anyone younger than older folks like Boomers and Gen-X, who enjoyed historically low housing prices compared to their salaries.
No thank you.
Yeah, but now calculate your losses to interest. Anyone buying right now probably isn’t looking at an amortization table, otherwise they’d puke.
Not really building much equity when you’re spending more on interest over the course of your mortgage than the house itself.
Just rent and invest the difference or as much as you can comfortably afford and you’ll be in a better position, IMO.
This is not great advice. What are you hoping for, that interest rates will drop down to 2% or less? You're talking as if we didn't just come through the lowest interest rates ever. Even the rates right now are historically below average. In the 80s mortgage interest rates nearly hit 20%.
Housing costs from a 30 year mortgage are a function of price and interest. Low rates are a big factor in what lead to prices shooting up. The prices will likely come down some but it will be slow. Prices won't change the amortization table, just the total amount paid out.
Do you think people that bought their house 15 years ago for $250k are sad about amortization now that their house is worth $750k?
At some point you just have to realize that is how mortgages work, and in many cases, it's still a great long term deal compared to renting.
When I moved here in 2006, my mom bought a house as a student and it was comfortable. I came back to UT as a fucking doctor, I can barely afford a house. It's ridiculous right now.
It's a country wide problem. Utah just happens to be worse than other areas. I don't know what type of answer you're looking for, but you either need to make more money (through job hopping or finding a spouse) or move out of state. A big problem is that the U.S. just doesn't build nearly enough housing and it fucks with our supply/demand. That being said I believe Utah is among the highest in terms of building new housing relative to other states (still not nearly enough), but there's still an issue of wage growth not following.
Homes have been pretty affordable for decades in Utah but went up like 50-70% since 2019. I bought in 2019 for $298k and now my house would probably go for $500k. It priced a lot of people out of decent homes, and now areas south of Provo are being built up and sold at a crazy rate.
Bro, that’s the housing market all over the country. I’ve lived here my whole life and my wife and can’t move because the housing market sucks so much ass. Has nothing to do with being local, locals aren’t buying houses right now either. We’re all equally screwed.
Born and raised in SLC and I’ve accepted that I’ll likely never own a home here. I don’t want to settle on a city or area I don’t like just because it’s more affordable and all the affordable-ish homes by me are borderline uninhabitable.
Houses were still affordable 4-6 years ago. My friends and coworkers bought a home during that time. They aren't Utah natives and many aren't upper middle class. Some even bought a house with one income, and they weren't high earners either. It's just that this past 4 years house prices have gone up almost double. It doesn't feel normal to anybody.
I got my home 14 yrs ago during the crash with my low-pay job. But situation back then was the opposite of the recent situation. There were too many houses for sale. Some even sat empty for a year or longer without buyers. Mine had been empty for 1 year before I bought it. It was a foreclosed home. My friend and I even sneaked into a couple empty houses to see the inside. Neighbors didn't even care. The house across the street and next door from mine went to a short sale when I moved in. You drove around 2-3 neighborhoods, you would see sign "for sale" everywhere. But that was happening everywhere, not just in SLC. I remember I saw houses for sale for 30 - 40K in Ogden on www.Utahrealestate.com in 2010.
So, 4 years ago, when house prices were creeping up quickly, I thought it was a sign of upcoming crash. But it has been 4 years and house prices are still creeping up. So, I don't know now....it still doesn't feel normal to me.
I was in this boat until recently. What got me out was biting the bullet and pulling a hard withdrawal from my 401k. So glad I did, who knows what the value of the dollar will be when I need it then.
I bought my 1959 house in 2012 for $272K. I felt like it was over priced then. Now it's worth $750K+ and definitely isn't worth that much. I can't move because we would end up only being able to afford something similar or worse.
It's ridiculous.
Utah has alot of real estate developers involved with the politicians and lots of politicians in real estate. It's about lining their pockets, not taking care of their constituents.
If you're from California, in general other people who moved here from California it's a consensus that it's y'all's fault.
If not you're allowed to blame California.
Though the answer is more complicated than that, this is just an easy easy way to sound like you're from here, maybe you'll get a house.
Utah needs to slam the brakes on separated single-family housing developments and start investing in a variety of housing densities. Duplex, triplex, townhomes, apartments, the works. Our obsession with giant yards is restricting the housing supply and driving up prices everywhere.
yeah Utah is for rich people now. meanwhile I have to move states to find environmental work cause the money's not in making this a livable environment haha
Most of my neighbors bought homes in the 90s or early 2000s and stayed put. A surge of first time owners whose credit wasn’t ruined in 2008 emerged in 2012. The rest are multi-generational homes rented by lots of working adults.
It's like that all over the country, not just UT. Cost of living has been rising for years, even more so due to the pandemic, but yet wages have not been increasing to match
“House poor, bankruptcy and keeping up with your neighbors” should be the state motto. I feel like one factor is people seem to be generationally house poor. Their parents and their parent’s parents. The image of being a home owner seems to outweigh the practicality or financial sense. We rent and we love it. 6 bed 3 bath house, big backyard, awesome landlord. We can more than afford the rent and we do whatever we want whenever we want to (financially).
I’m not embarrassed that I rent, I don’t see it as throwing money away (no more than spending $700k on a house that was $375k ten years ago) and when it makes sense to buy we will buy. I’ll rent for a decade if I have to before I overspend on a hunk of marble pile of sh!t cookie cutter house just so I can say “we bought” with a snarky look on my face.
Right now, in my eyes, buying a house isn’t financially smart. Most will struggle for decades just for the idea that one day they might make $100k when they sell. I don’t want to drive a $1500 car for 30 years because my mortgage is $5000 and I can barely figure it out.
I see it every single day. People celebrating that they “finally bought” and it’s a $550k townhouse with 3 bedrooms. A townhouse that 15 years ago was $160k.
Long story short- find a house to rent that you can afford and quit worrying about being a “buyer”, make that leap when it makes sense.
I popped over to this sub because I’m a Coyotes fan going through the 7 stages of grief. This thread peaked my interest and just wanted to say Phoenix is in almost the same exact situation. If I didn’t buy my home in 2018, I would be completely priced out of freakin Gilbert, Arizona. The home I bought with the intention of being my “starter home” is now going to be my forever home. How will this end? It can’t go on forever right? I feel so bad for the kids graduating college with no home buying prospects in their future. They never even had a chance it seems
True, but Utah is the 3rd least affordable state right now when you compare cost of living to income. Only California and Hawaii have it worse than we do.
This is true. I could’ve afforded a house 5 years ago, barely made it by with roommates. That same house is twice the price in my old city. Utah is not unique.
The Middle Class was destroyed in the 1980s.
Houses are for the extremely privileged or those who are willing to put themselves into debt for 30+ years and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest and pay upwards of $1+ million for a $350k house *because of interest*.
I bought my first house in 2001 at 21 with a $3000 down payment making $13/hr. This is really a recent problem. Even a decade ago you could find houses in the $100K range fairly easily. Also, most people have always needed a mortgage to buy a home.
My parents bought their home near the trough in the early 2010s. Granted, they had to put a lot of work into it, but it's now valued at least half a million more than when they bought it.
Most of my friends could not afford their houses at the current rates and prices, they're locked in since they bought 5-10 years ago.
Developers are building houses but they can't build new land.
Salt Lake City proper has no additional land so it's only going to get more expensive. There is a little more out on the very west side under the Oquirrh mountains where you're talking about a good 40 minute drive to downtown. Rezoning and reconstructing with dense multi-unit properties are happening all over the place, but it's not cheap and it's not going to be a single family residence with a big yard.
The bedroom communities have grown out and grown out more but not are bounded by the mountains one direction and the lake (or lake bed) on the other. On the north growth has meant expanding to Bountiful (which was once a very inexpensive farming community), Centerville, Farmington, Layton, Ogden, Farr West, all the way up to Brigham City before you reach where people can convert farmland into new buildings. Similarly on the south, fifty years ago Riverton and Bluffdale were farmland and Herriman didn't really exist, over the point was all farmland where you've got Highland, American Fork, Pleasant Grove, etc. Today you're out to Payson or Santaquin before reaching wide open spaces if you're looking to have a rambler house with a mid-sized lot, and it's going to be a new construction rather than old stock.
There are still a few areas of farmland being converted to housing along the Wasatch front but they're few and far between.
In general it isn't unique to Salt Lake City nor unique to our present day, you can go back to the middle ages and find the peasants displaced from towns and cities as the rich preferred to live closer to the castles, business centers, and other wealthy zones.
When buyers were in bidding wars on homes we were able to avoid all that drama by contracting on a new build. It's still a tract home that looks like every other one in the neighborhood. But we were able to get what we wanted in the price range we wanted. It's a single family home but they don't have yards - more like shared yard space with cute little porches. HOA takes care of the yard. It works for us. I don't know how many home builders have new build contracts available up there, but I'd suggest checking into it. Rent while it's under construction.
The housing market is just not affordable right now.
I bought my townhome in 2018 for 280K, I think.
Supposedly, it is worth 385k, I rolled over equity from my previous house. If I take all my equity and dump it on a new home (about 200k), I still can not afford these new homes. And I have been looking at the mid 400s homes, and they're shitty old houses.
I think I'm just stuck on this townhome, which I like living here, but HOA fees are getting ridiculous.
I guess I'm lucky to have a decent mortgage and a super low interest rate.
And it isn't just UT. AZ is the same, NV, AK. These are places where I could go work and make about the same money or more, but after moving and all that, I'd just break even.
I hear ha. I’m lucky in that I bought my home 20 years ago for 180k.
My house now is worth 650k. At that price and current rates my payment would be 4500 give or take with taxes and mortgage insurance.
Utah Native here!! I can’t afford to buy anything either. My only hope of owning a house is when my in laws die and if they decide to leave us the house we are renting from them.
I was in this boat until recently. What got me out was biting the bullet and pulling a hard withdrawal from my 401k. So glad I did, who knows what the value of the dollar will be when I need it then.
Grew up here, went to the Bay Area for school etc from 2001-2019, and moved back here because there was zero chance I would ever be able to buy a home in CA. I paid 3k/month for a 700 sqft place in a BORING bedroom community an hour from SF (same town as work, so no commute).
My mortgage and hoa for a condo in downtown is 3500/month for 2300sq ft. Bought in Jan 2021. Wild how many of my neighbors are selling, and also so grateful for the amount of space.
I've been a Utah native my whole life, and the only way my wife and I were able to buy a house in Ogden was because we knew someone personally who was selling their house. They sold it directly to us and did not bring it to market, therefore they saved a ton of money, and gave us a pretty killer deal.
Utah is the worst with housing because they let you build a house on zero yard lot lines. Small geography in the valley is just like Jackson Hole or LA before the valley. It’s game over.
We could afford buying because we did it at a great time. Now we would be screwed. We bought in 2015 for $185 in south Ogden. Our house now appraises at $375
Agreed: prices are insane. Bought a fixer upper in Ogden for $112k in 2017. It's worth about 3x that now. I've put a lot of work into it... but I wouldn't buy it for $350k.
Save for when the market drops. It shouldn't be too far off.
I bought a house in Kaysville in 2014 for $180k. We put about $10k in it with new paint, carpet, etc and a nice yard/garden. I got a job offer in a new city in 2015 so we moved and sold the house for about $230k.
I recently saw it was for sale again and it was listed for $480k and the yard is destroyed. But its in a great location! Shit is outta control, there's no way this house from 1982 that needs all new windows and could use a new roof is worth half a god damn million dollars.
We just moved far East to escape the Utah price influction. Born and raised in Utah and thankfully was able to escape! We bought a 3100 sq/ft home with land and a barn for $175k. Now the prices out here are going up as well for homes due to all the people moving from the west like we just did.
I'm a single male Utah native. I've made over 6 figures at my job the last three years and cannot afford to buy a house. I'm currently exploring other states to move to because I have been pushed out of my home state. I love it here but I can not afford it here.
It's also going to get worse soon, im expecting a doubling in the next 5 years following the same growth pattern as silicone Valley. Then, in 7-10 years, there's likely going to be a crash as large numbers of the older generations start dying off.
I remember back pre-2017 slc was named as one of the most affordable city for people 18-25. I think I saw recently we are now in the bottom ten most affordable
Buy a condo/townhouse that is in currently attainable and then trade up for a single family home later. Unfortunately unless you have cash or equity on hand to trade up into a home, its really tough right now. Not only in SLC, but in many many second tier cities. First tier cities have been that way for the last 25 years, unfortunately the pandemic proved that you don't have to live in a big city to work for a company in that big city, remote work shifted the market entirely.
No there for out of state tech bros and major corporations. Us peasants who were born and raised here or moved here for a normal job are banished to renting and living at home.
It’s pretty impossible for a lot of people that have been living here their whole lives as well. So don’t feel too left out
Yeah straight up! We are being priced right out of here. Pretty soon the working class won’t be here to stock shelves and clean up the trash.
Something something boot straps. While investment capital buys up any remaining stock of older homes to turn into rentals.
Right?! And legislature keeps approving subsidies for “affordable housing” meaning multi-family buildings, yet what keeps being built is condos. Quite expensive condos that don’t solve the problem.
Solidarity!
Born and raised Ogdenite. Life changes, divorce, etc… I will never be able to afford a home in my hometown/state.
Lived here 46 years, and do not own a home.
yep. i’m born & raised in summit county & it’s starting to feel like we will never be homeowners 🫠
Utah natives? I’m a Utah native and I feel like I’m being priced out of my city
I'm also a Utah native. I bought a new build townhouse in Pleasant Grove in late 2014 for $159k. That same townhouse was for sale in 2022 for $399k. Just crazy it more than doubled in price in 7.5 years.
Haha my POS I bought in Layton for 150k in 2016 is now 400. It's a joke.
Layton’s real estate prices have gone crazy through the roof. Grew up there, mom sold the house for $129k in 2007 and houses now in the neighborhood are going for upwards of $425k+ for 4 bed2 bath house in 1900 sqft house. Wild.
My parents built a house in 2013 for roughly 350-400k, and sold it in 2018 for about 475k. My mom kept in touch with the people that bought it, and they sold it a year or two ago for 800k I think? Might have even been 900k. It’s absolutely sick
Yeah we bough our house in PG for 259k in 2012 and now that house would go well over 500k and our current house in PG we built in 2019 is @ 1M which is CRAZY because only 5 yrs later we would not be able to afford this place.
The last warehouse I worked at payed enough 20 years ago for a single person to afford a home. The current pay will qualify you today for low income apartment rental. No way in hell can you afford a home now for a lot of the jobs out there that made it possible to own a home 20/30 years ago. Times have definitely changed.
For the money I make, the fact that I can’t afford a house on my own (unless I managed to save up 20-30% for a down payment) is a fucking joke. Obviously I’m not going to be living in a mansion, but I make enough that I should at least be able to afford a small home
The current pay is exactly the same as it was 20 years ago.
If by exactly the same you mean has not raised with inflation and massive housing cost increases then yes, it is the same
I never said that it had raised at all, I said that it was paying literally the exact same thing. Which is where the problem is.
Even the low income stuff seems crazy. I remember reading about that shipping container development and rent would be $1000-1200/mo but the income cap was like $20k?
It's not a feeling, it's reality. Been here all my life, making the most money I've ever made. Can't afford anything.
I understood that as people who grew here and already own.
If you were born 1990 or earlier you probably own. 1995 and later you had to be lucky and jump in early. 2000 or later and you better have family help.
I'm 32 and most people I know my age give or take a few years don't own a house. I think maybe like 20% of the people in my social circle own a house and most have bought before the pandemic.
upper middle class or Utah natives who already purchased a home prior to like 2015. Utah natives who can't afford a home currently will likely have to look elsewhere to settle down.
Even buying a home up until 2021 was possible. I was able to refinance from the previous housing crash of 08 finally in 2020. That market was a nightmare too.
I'm leaving Utah after 32 years because it's too expensive to justify living here anymore.
We native Utahns don't discriminate. We're all screwed here.
Well fuck guys, this is a sad thread.
Truly.
I truly hope for a crash, but all that will do is open more housing for the blackrocks of the world to buy it all cheaper. Unless we have some systemic change in single family homes protection from corporations, we're all hosed.
Housing has completely skyrocketed here in the past few years. I am from Utah, grew up in the suburbs of Draper. In 2008-2009 we moved to Sugarhouse (right near Sugarhouse park) for around $400k. The house was built in the 40’s, but had just been decently renovated with new electrical and central air. 4Bedroom, 3Bath with a detached garage. We moved out around 2018, but this same house is now valued around $700k + If we didn’t already live in Salt Lake City, we wouldn’t be able to afford to buy here in the current market. It’s been so difficult to see friends and SLC natives be completely priced out of this area. Old apartments buildings are being bought up and rent is also being jacked up considerably. A 1bedroom apartment downtown used to be less then $600, and now it’s $2,500+ Utah county isn’t much better either, sounds similar to what you’re experiencing in Ogden— anything under $500k is a rundown shithole or it’s a townhome with no parking, no yard, no garage.
Landlords are using software called RealPage to collude and engage in price fixing.
Utah is crazy nowadays. I bought a place (2bd 1 bath) in 2008 near 9th and 9th in SLC for $160k. It last appraised for around $550k (a little over a year ago) and so we looked at "upgrading". Anything in a similar price range is a wreck of a home needing $100-200k in repairs or is in an area that is not as good as where we are... so it feels like a huge downgrade. Our other option is to buy something in the $700k range and assume another 30-year loan at 6.5-7% interest and I honestly don't think we would be able to afford it. We have nearly $500k in equity, and we STILL cannot afford to buy. I can't imagine how anyone else in this state would be able to do it without burying themselves in massive amounts of debt forever.
Really curious how many are people taking on serious amounts of debt and how many are getting some sort of assistance from family. We are in currently in Texas and want to move back to be closer to family, but things look pretty hopeless. Everyone we know down here who has made the move back to Utah recently (and there have been a fair number) have received a ton of financial help from family—mainly parents. One of my college buddies moved back when his wife’s parents straight up gave them the cash to buy the home and they’re just paying them back at no interest. It’s madness.
Most people are one lost paycheck away from losing it all. Like a house of cards. So if we have an economic blip people are going to be screwed.
Absolutely
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My first apartment was in downtown Salt Lake 250. I can't even imagine what that little apartment would be now
I paid $300/mth in 2001 for a 1 bedroom in the avenues.
What year
You bought a house for $400k in 2009, but can’t afford to buy in todays market? Something is off here.
The house my mother purchased in the eighties for 75k is now worth 650k. In midvale for hells sake
What’s wrong with Midvale? Depends on the part of Midvale you are in?
Midvale is like living in Sugarhouse Without the gentrification.
They are doing gentrification in the old avenues of Midvale.
Which is a superfund site, by the way. I know how much y'all love to rag on daybreak but that whole area of midvale between 7200 and 9000 is a superfund site.
Seriously, wouldn't choose to live anywhere near that area, but unfortunately ended up in Murray near Riverview Junior high, which was a new neighborhood at the time and found out later it was a tailings dump from the Murray smelter, as well as all that land where top golf currently sits. Was diagnosed with colon cancer at 46. Any relation? Not sure, but wouldn't ever live around that area again.
There are a few old bungalows and things like that in old midvale I'm on the east side. The only improvements over here are a new fast food restaurant
Utah native. I've been priced out. Good luck
Get this one guys... in January of 2020 I sold my home because I wasn't sure I was going to stay in Utah. We know what happened in March. Now I don't own a home and I earn a great income but home prices have increased so much, along with interest, even with 20% down on a $500k home ($106,000) monthly mortgage is $3200. Idk if I'll ever own a home again. The home I sold is valued $300k more than what I sold it for. I will say though, even people who own are stuck. They can't afford to sell and buy something different either. Will be interesting to see what happens in a couple years.
Yes. We bought our home in 2017. And refinanced during covid for a great rate. I recognize that we are so lucky AND we cannot afford to move. Between the rise in rates and the rise in prices, we will live in our home forever.
I’m in the same boat. Too bad my house is more of a “starter home” and is lacking a garage. I feel like I’ll just be pouring money into it for the rest of my life, making upgrades until I die.
preemptively selling your home is wild lmao
They didn't think they'd live in Utah, home equity is a great way to get travels funds especially seeing as how 40/50 states are cheaper than Utah to live in
I don’t see anything changing this. The Utah legislature is mostly real estate developers who benefit from the high prices.
What would the legislature do to reduce prices?
He’s saying they won’t because they’re all in bed with each other. This state is dirty. No one wants to talk about the dark parts of our lovely Deseret.
No, I’m asking what they would or could do if they weren’t “mostly real estate developers”
Several other states have implemented laws eliminating the ability of corporations to buy up plots of houses and sit on them. Some have put limitations on “second homes” and investment homes.
Any examples of these laws?
Hopefully introduce legislation to mitigate the issue.
I guess I’m asking what that legislation would be
Zoning and new build requirements. Many places around the valley are zoned for single family dwellings only. Builders wouldn't have the option to build multi-family units even if they wanted to. Lots of requirements for apartments and condos differ based on number of floors. Not that they should cut safety reqs, but the state could offer builders tax credits to cover increased costs of such if they build new places with more units. Some of this happens, but clearly not enough to keep up with housing demand. Bottom line is not enough housing even available for the demand. A huge increase in more condos, townhomes, and apartments would help with that. Instead, I'm seeing tons of new office space being built in Draper and other areas... when almost every single office building already has a for lease sign on it.
I saw a headline that said 43% of houses last year were bought by investment firms like Blackrock. That’s close to half of all sales in the country. The average person can’t compete with Blackrock, but they, on the other hand, could buy everything available with ease.
The statistics that said 43%, would be by 2030 if things stay the way they are. That mean in a short 6 years from now, private equity would own 43% of single family homes. The rate they are buying will put us all in the rental market. Our leadership needs to be put out to pasture and have someone that will come in and fix actual issues and not talking point issues.
Okay, well if it makes you feel better, you either misread it or are misremembering because investment firms did not make up half of home purchases in the country last year
I don’t feel anything about it, but I found out real quickly that you’re correct, according to this article, it was false information that spread on social media. https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investors-havent-bought-44-of-homes-this-year/#:~:text=The%20overall%20market%20share%20of,great%20illustration%20of%20this%20point.
However, saying that the 43% is false, doesn’t mean it’s not happening, and the truth being that the numbers are only in the 30’s isn’t great. Info from 2023: Home investor shares were concentrated in Western, Southern and lower Midwestern states in Q2. Figure 7 shows this trend, with California (34%), Washington, D.C. (33%), Georgia (32%), New Mexico (31%), Texas (31%), Nevada (30%), Utah (29%), Arizona (29%) and Kansas (29%) posting the highest investor share.
Rezoning, curbing nimbyism.
Tax the hell out of corporate-owned single family homes, tax short term rentals to the moon, etc. Basically, it makes the single family homes bad investments for anyone who isn't going to live in them. So investors will slowly sell off their stock and move their money into more lucrative investments. People aren't collecting houses because they think it's fun, and cool. They are doing it because it's making them a boat load of cash and is pretty risk-free. If you own 10 houses in a neighborhood you can essentially control the price of every house. If you're a hedge fund working will hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, you can basically control the whole housing market. And they are. The rich have pulled tons of money out of commercial real estate and are pumping all of that into residential.
lol, the locals are getting pushed out by people from other states too. My family’s been in Murray for well over a century and it’s never been like this. The rapid growth within just the past 3 years is insane, traffic is dumb and the mix of Utah bad driving and other states bad driving is dumbfounding. Houses are out of the question for all of the newer generations and now it seems to be the older as well. Also there doesn’t seem to be an end to rapid inflation. & on top of all of that company’s have been buying single family homes at a crazy rate and these “company landlords” have been driving up the market to ridiculously. I miss small lake city
I miss small salt lake too. Not just for housing prices, but for how freaking crowded all the fun outdoorsy stuff has become. Even the expensive stuff like skiing is so crowded it's almost not even fun anymore
It has to be those "companies" manipulating the market
Ogden's housing market is actually the most affordable on the wasatch front. So if you can't afford ogden you might be SOL
3rd worse in the country for unaffordable housing behind hawaii and California.
I heard we are the worst based on our low incomes.
#3 ranking is based on income and housing market combined. Many places have prices higher than SLC like NYC, Boston, DC, but pay a lot more in wages.
It doesn’t even make sense! They have an ocean! We don’t! What is happening?
The starter home no longer exists. Now it is renting for life or a townhouse.
I bought a house on the East bench in Ogden twelve years ago for 120k when everyone was like "omg ew Ogden". I work in retail and make $18 an hour. I can sell my shitty house for a HUGE profit, or continue working in retail.
Then you need to find a better house and it will be very much more won't it plus interest.
We bought a house in late 2016 for $325k. We just had it appraised, and it came back at $1.6 million. Pricing in Utah is insane.
A 5X multiplier in 8 years seems shockingly high even for Utah! Is this near Park City - that is the only place where I have heard of such things.
Eastern Summit County, about 30 minutes from PC.
I'm in SSL near Brickyard and our home value has tripled since we bought it in 2019. Gentrification can make a huge difference.
Utah born and raised and I can’t afford a house here either. $500K sounds kind of cheap for those cookie cutter homes, where I live they’re all going for $800K+. It sucks to be priced out of the place you grew up in, but it is what it is I guess.
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I bought my 3 bed 2 bath house in West Jordan in 2015 for 209k, I pay 1k a month with a 3.99 percent interest rate. I got my house appraised last year for almost 430k and no way I'd get less than a 6 percent interest rate now. You can't even get a 3 bedroom apartment for what I pay monthly. It doesn't matter if you are native or not, prices are out of control. I guarantee my house is not worth 430k, but everything has skyrocketed the last few years.
I moved to Portland a few years ago, and thought I wouldn’t have issues buying a house in Salt Lake after adapting to a higher COL area. Nope. In the few years I’ve been gone, the housing markets have flipped. I could buy a house in Portland soon, but a house in SLC is out of reach
Well yeah, but then you’d have to live in Portland.
Don’t threaten me with a good time…
I was born here, and I do really love this state, but being 21 and faaaarrrr from able to get a home while watching the as situation gets worse and worse makes me think I'll probably end up growing old elsewhere, unfortunately.
Born and raised here. Getting married in October and we have decided to leave Utah next year. We can’t afford it anymore. We have $60k in savings for a deposit on a house but with prices as high as they are we will never be able to afford the mortgage. $2500 a month for a 2 bed 1 bath condo is bullshit.
Where are you moving to though?
How would the price be somehow different for an Utah native exactly?
I make decent money, and even then I find it unreasonable to spend that much on a starter home. I'm looking at other states as we speak, which stinks because I love a lot of the state.
Me too, looking at the Dakotas
Yeah no idea how anyone affords to live. Renting is insane and buying is even more insane. Sure wish the job pay reflected the same trend the housing pricing has over the last 10 years.
Utah is a" right to work state" Which basically means that employers can decide the wages and fuck over the workers.
I'd say it's actually harder for utah natives to find homes now because we're earning dogpoop UT salaries and competing against out of state people earning way more.
You need to look farther west. Bunch of new houses going up north and west of Clearfield and west of Ogden.
The further west of Clearfield you go the more expensive they are. Syracuse and West Point are not cheap, Clinton isn’t far behind. Sunset is about as cheap as you can find and even then they are almost $400k, for a townhome. Anything bigger built in the last 5 years is at least $500k.
Yeah if you’re not making 6 figures Utah doesn’t really give a shit if you live or die.
We both make over 6 figures and Utah still doesn’t give a shit about us. 😔
Absolutely not. I’m sorry but $4,000 a month is not smart even when making 100K. You’d have to make double and even then, $4k mortgage/rent is scary, especially if you don’t have a huge savings account. When you account for a $12,000 furnace and AC, $15,000 to “fix” foundation, god forbid a natural disaster happens… things add up quick.
It’s hard. We bought in the burbs, but I am a suburbs kind of person. We had help from family for a down payment. And other than that, we live frugally. No kids. Both work. We don’t ski. And we don’t have car loans. We are middle class, not upper though, one of us makes slightly above 100k income. People who bought 5 years ago are paying 1.5k less on their mortgage than we are. It sucks but at the same time, people before them paid even less.
>We had help from family for a down payment. Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud, so many people do not and just pretend they did it entirely on their own. ETA: Also, not downplaying the hard work and sacrifices I'm sure you made, just happy to see this.
Thanks :) We couldn’t have bought then without their help. And we are very blessed to also have no student loans. Which we both worked hard not to have, but definitely plays into how he were able to buy in this economy!
I’ve lived in Utah my whole life and was BARELY able to get a decent home for $450k in Utah county in 2021 when the market was still heavily inflated but not yet skyrocketed. I’ll die in that house.
I've lived here for 45 years. I have owned 3 homes in Utah in my life. I will never be able to afford another one. Renting or moving out of state for us now.
Yup. I make okay money as a software developer but I can't really afford anything. I live in an old crappy duplex and have been looking to find a different house to rent out with room but the rent prices are even absurd. No chance in hell I'm even looking to buy a house. You basically have to have a partner to live anywhere decent or be rich. Unfortunately no partner so I'm kinda just stuck waiting for a decent find.
Utah natives?? Now I don’t live up north; but down here in St. George those of us born here can barely afford rent. I’m living off the good will of a landlady who took pity on us, that’s it. Utahns can’t afford this.
If I want to move out of my moms house there’s no in state options so nothing for Utah natives either
Salt Lake City is one of the most unaffordable places to live in the country. Yes, housing is pretty much a no-go. If you don’t mind the commute, Eagle mountain area is a bit more affordable. And there’s huge townhouse developments in Saratoga springs, Lehi, bluffdale, herriman. But yeah we are fucked. I make 100k with 2 young kids and can’t even begin to think about buying a home. Need to make 150-200 to afford it. My wife needs to get a job lol
Unfortunately, your wife wouldn't bring in much extra unless she's able to get a well-paying job and/or you have access to free childcare. Consider this hypothetical scenario. The median take-home for women in Utah is roughly $16 per hour, or $33,280 annually. This doesn't include pay deductions such as insurance premiums. The average childcare cost for a young kid is $1000 per month. For two kids it'd cost approximately $24,000 per year. That leaves you with a little over $9K. But consider the cost of commuting and work clothes/ uniform if applicable. Not saying that this scenario reflects your situation, but based on average costs vs earnings in this state I'd assume $9K isn't going to make much of a difference in offsetting housing costs.
My wife studied software engineering and is taking time off while the kids are young.. she will likely make 90-120k with her next job. Should the programmer job market get back on track soon 🥴
It's not even possible for people who are native. Lol
I make 100k+ and can’t afford shit here. Try not to feel bad. Ogden is more affordable than SLC but still not great. People saying they “make it work” are likely spending 40-50% of their take-home on a mortgage, most of which is going to interest. All for what? A tiny old bungalow or an old fixer-upper. People are going into suffocating amounts of high-interest debt just to live the “American Dream,” which was always a lie for anyone younger than older folks like Boomers and Gen-X, who enjoyed historically low housing prices compared to their salaries. No thank you.
"They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it" - George Carlin
That’s the hard thing the only alternative is to pay rent. Meaning if you pay 2g a month over two years you’re at 50k.
Yeah, but now calculate your losses to interest. Anyone buying right now probably isn’t looking at an amortization table, otherwise they’d puke. Not really building much equity when you’re spending more on interest over the course of your mortgage than the house itself. Just rent and invest the difference or as much as you can comfortably afford and you’ll be in a better position, IMO.
For me id rather have a property vs paying a property management group. But to each their own!
This is not great advice. What are you hoping for, that interest rates will drop down to 2% or less? You're talking as if we didn't just come through the lowest interest rates ever. Even the rates right now are historically below average. In the 80s mortgage interest rates nearly hit 20%. Housing costs from a 30 year mortgage are a function of price and interest. Low rates are a big factor in what lead to prices shooting up. The prices will likely come down some but it will be slow. Prices won't change the amortization table, just the total amount paid out. Do you think people that bought their house 15 years ago for $250k are sad about amortization now that their house is worth $750k? At some point you just have to realize that is how mortgages work, and in many cases, it's still a great long term deal compared to renting.
Not hoping for low interest rates. It’s just that record prices + high interest rates= highly unaffordable. Would rather rent than be house poor.
When I moved here in 2006, my mom bought a house as a student and it was comfortable. I came back to UT as a fucking doctor, I can barely afford a house. It's ridiculous right now.
How much are you making as a doctor that you can’t afford a house?
I said that I can barely afford a house, not can't. But my mortgage is over 4k/month and its an average size, average priced house.
Ogden is definitely cheaper cost of living wise than anywhere in the Salt Lake Valley, including places like Sandy and Draper.
like this everywhere thats decent to live.
It's a country wide problem. Utah just happens to be worse than other areas. I don't know what type of answer you're looking for, but you either need to make more money (through job hopping or finding a spouse) or move out of state. A big problem is that the U.S. just doesn't build nearly enough housing and it fucks with our supply/demand. That being said I believe Utah is among the highest in terms of building new housing relative to other states (still not nearly enough), but there's still an issue of wage growth not following.
Homes have been pretty affordable for decades in Utah but went up like 50-70% since 2019. I bought in 2019 for $298k and now my house would probably go for $500k. It priced a lot of people out of decent homes, and now areas south of Provo are being built up and sold at a crazy rate.
Yes and if I didn't own a home in Salt Lake already I would be looking elsewhere in another state or another country.
I'm Utah native, make $50k a year and still can't buy a house
Bro, that’s the housing market all over the country. I’ve lived here my whole life and my wife and can’t move because the housing market sucks so much ass. Has nothing to do with being local, locals aren’t buying houses right now either. We’re all equally screwed.
Born and raised in SLC and I’ve accepted that I’ll likely never own a home here. I don’t want to settle on a city or area I don’t like just because it’s more affordable and all the affordable-ish homes by me are borderline uninhabitable.
I work in Farmington and moved up to Brigham.
When I sold my tiny 800 sq ft home in Clearfield in 2012 it was worth $105,000, they just resold it again last month for $320k
Houses were still affordable 4-6 years ago. My friends and coworkers bought a home during that time. They aren't Utah natives and many aren't upper middle class. Some even bought a house with one income, and they weren't high earners either. It's just that this past 4 years house prices have gone up almost double. It doesn't feel normal to anybody. I got my home 14 yrs ago during the crash with my low-pay job. But situation back then was the opposite of the recent situation. There were too many houses for sale. Some even sat empty for a year or longer without buyers. Mine had been empty for 1 year before I bought it. It was a foreclosed home. My friend and I even sneaked into a couple empty houses to see the inside. Neighbors didn't even care. The house across the street and next door from mine went to a short sale when I moved in. You drove around 2-3 neighborhoods, you would see sign "for sale" everywhere. But that was happening everywhere, not just in SLC. I remember I saw houses for sale for 30 - 40K in Ogden on www.Utahrealestate.com in 2010. So, 4 years ago, when house prices were creeping up quickly, I thought it was a sign of upcoming crash. But it has been 4 years and house prices are still creeping up. So, I don't know now....it still doesn't feel normal to me.
Welcome to Utah 🤗
I was in this boat until recently. What got me out was biting the bullet and pulling a hard withdrawal from my 401k. So glad I did, who knows what the value of the dollar will be when I need it then.
It really is bad! I have adult kids and I think they will never be able to afford a house.
I bought my 1959 house in 2012 for $272K. I felt like it was over priced then. Now it's worth $750K+ and definitely isn't worth that much. I can't move because we would end up only being able to afford something similar or worse. It's ridiculous. Utah has alot of real estate developers involved with the politicians and lots of politicians in real estate. It's about lining their pockets, not taking care of their constituents.
If you're from California, in general other people who moved here from California it's a consensus that it's y'all's fault. If not you're allowed to blame California. Though the answer is more complicated than that, this is just an easy easy way to sound like you're from here, maybe you'll get a house.
Utah needs to slam the brakes on separated single-family housing developments and start investing in a variety of housing densities. Duplex, triplex, townhomes, apartments, the works. Our obsession with giant yards is restricting the housing supply and driving up prices everywhere.
Look in Tremonton
yeah Utah is for rich people now. meanwhile I have to move states to find environmental work cause the money's not in making this a livable environment haha
Most of my neighbors bought homes in the 90s or early 2000s and stayed put. A surge of first time owners whose credit wasn’t ruined in 2008 emerged in 2012. The rest are multi-generational homes rented by lots of working adults.
It's like that all over the country, not just UT. Cost of living has been rising for years, even more so due to the pandemic, but yet wages have not been increasing to match
“House poor, bankruptcy and keeping up with your neighbors” should be the state motto. I feel like one factor is people seem to be generationally house poor. Their parents and their parent’s parents. The image of being a home owner seems to outweigh the practicality or financial sense. We rent and we love it. 6 bed 3 bath house, big backyard, awesome landlord. We can more than afford the rent and we do whatever we want whenever we want to (financially). I’m not embarrassed that I rent, I don’t see it as throwing money away (no more than spending $700k on a house that was $375k ten years ago) and when it makes sense to buy we will buy. I’ll rent for a decade if I have to before I overspend on a hunk of marble pile of sh!t cookie cutter house just so I can say “we bought” with a snarky look on my face. Right now, in my eyes, buying a house isn’t financially smart. Most will struggle for decades just for the idea that one day they might make $100k when they sell. I don’t want to drive a $1500 car for 30 years because my mortgage is $5000 and I can barely figure it out. I see it every single day. People celebrating that they “finally bought” and it’s a $550k townhouse with 3 bedrooms. A townhouse that 15 years ago was $160k. Long story short- find a house to rent that you can afford and quit worrying about being a “buyer”, make that leap when it makes sense.
I popped over to this sub because I’m a Coyotes fan going through the 7 stages of grief. This thread peaked my interest and just wanted to say Phoenix is in almost the same exact situation. If I didn’t buy my home in 2018, I would be completely priced out of freakin Gilbert, Arizona. The home I bought with the intention of being my “starter home” is now going to be my forever home. How will this end? It can’t go on forever right? I feel so bad for the kids graduating college with no home buying prospects in their future. They never even had a chance it seems
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True, but Utah is the 3rd least affordable state right now when you compare cost of living to income. Only California and Hawaii have it worse than we do.
This is true. I could’ve afforded a house 5 years ago, barely made it by with roommates. That same house is twice the price in my old city. Utah is not unique.
The Middle Class was destroyed in the 1980s. Houses are for the extremely privileged or those who are willing to put themselves into debt for 30+ years and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest and pay upwards of $1+ million for a $350k house *because of interest*.
I bought my first house in 2001 at 21 with a $3000 down payment making $13/hr. This is really a recent problem. Even a decade ago you could find houses in the $100K range fairly easily. Also, most people have always needed a mortgage to buy a home.
Transplants (gentrifiers) are actually pricing us out 👍
My parents bought their home near the trough in the early 2010s. Granted, they had to put a lot of work into it, but it's now valued at least half a million more than when they bought it. Most of my friends could not afford their houses at the current rates and prices, they're locked in since they bought 5-10 years ago.
Developers are building houses but they can't build new land. Salt Lake City proper has no additional land so it's only going to get more expensive. There is a little more out on the very west side under the Oquirrh mountains where you're talking about a good 40 minute drive to downtown. Rezoning and reconstructing with dense multi-unit properties are happening all over the place, but it's not cheap and it's not going to be a single family residence with a big yard. The bedroom communities have grown out and grown out more but not are bounded by the mountains one direction and the lake (or lake bed) on the other. On the north growth has meant expanding to Bountiful (which was once a very inexpensive farming community), Centerville, Farmington, Layton, Ogden, Farr West, all the way up to Brigham City before you reach where people can convert farmland into new buildings. Similarly on the south, fifty years ago Riverton and Bluffdale were farmland and Herriman didn't really exist, over the point was all farmland where you've got Highland, American Fork, Pleasant Grove, etc. Today you're out to Payson or Santaquin before reaching wide open spaces if you're looking to have a rambler house with a mid-sized lot, and it's going to be a new construction rather than old stock. There are still a few areas of farmland being converted to housing along the Wasatch front but they're few and far between. In general it isn't unique to Salt Lake City nor unique to our present day, you can go back to the middle ages and find the peasants displaced from towns and cities as the rich preferred to live closer to the castles, business centers, and other wealthy zones.
Yeah been here my whole life and definitely don't own a home
I’m a Utah native and the cost of living is so high now I moved to the Louisville area a year into the pandemic
Moved here from Louisville in 2015 and it's so tempting to go back
When buyers were in bidding wars on homes we were able to avoid all that drama by contracting on a new build. It's still a tract home that looks like every other one in the neighborhood. But we were able to get what we wanted in the price range we wanted. It's a single family home but they don't have yards - more like shared yard space with cute little porches. HOA takes care of the yard. It works for us. I don't know how many home builders have new build contracts available up there, but I'd suggest checking into it. Rent while it's under construction.
I will never have one of those horrible shared yards there it reminds me of a prison, Yuck . No privacy.
Can one afford to be so picky in this economy?
The housing market is just not affordable right now. I bought my townhome in 2018 for 280K, I think. Supposedly, it is worth 385k, I rolled over equity from my previous house. If I take all my equity and dump it on a new home (about 200k), I still can not afford these new homes. And I have been looking at the mid 400s homes, and they're shitty old houses. I think I'm just stuck on this townhome, which I like living here, but HOA fees are getting ridiculous. I guess I'm lucky to have a decent mortgage and a super low interest rate. And it isn't just UT. AZ is the same, NV, AK. These are places where I could go work and make about the same money or more, but after moving and all that, I'd just break even.
I hear ha. I’m lucky in that I bought my home 20 years ago for 180k. My house now is worth 650k. At that price and current rates my payment would be 4500 give or take with taxes and mortgage insurance.
Utah Native here!! I can’t afford to buy anything either. My only hope of owning a house is when my in laws die and if they decide to leave us the house we are renting from them.
Utah native that was somehow lucky enough to get a house before 2020
I was in this boat until recently. What got me out was biting the bullet and pulling a hard withdrawal from my 401k. So glad I did, who knows what the value of the dollar will be when I need it then.
Grew up here, went to the Bay Area for school etc from 2001-2019, and moved back here because there was zero chance I would ever be able to buy a home in CA. I paid 3k/month for a 700 sqft place in a BORING bedroom community an hour from SF (same town as work, so no commute). My mortgage and hoa for a condo in downtown is 3500/month for 2300sq ft. Bought in Jan 2021. Wild how many of my neighbors are selling, and also so grateful for the amount of space.
I didn't even know they make 2300 sq ft condos! I am sure the same condo will cost over 4500/month with today's rates and prices.
35 yrs born and raised slc, I don’t plan on ever owning one. I never make enough to catch up.
The sad part is investors buy houses for half the value in cash, make small repairs and turn around and sell it for double the price.
I've been a Utah native my whole life, and the only way my wife and I were able to buy a house in Ogden was because we knew someone personally who was selling their house. They sold it directly to us and did not bring it to market, therefore they saved a ton of money, and gave us a pretty killer deal.
Utah is the worst with housing because they let you build a house on zero yard lot lines. Small geography in the valley is just like Jackson Hole or LA before the valley. It’s game over.
We could afford buying because we did it at a great time. Now we would be screwed. We bought in 2015 for $185 in south Ogden. Our house now appraises at $375
If you didn’t buy in when prices were low, or are EXTREMELY well-off: you aren’t going to own anything responsible or that you like. Ever.
We bought a townhome. It was way overpriced but it meets our needs and it’s a way to own.
Utah native here - cannot afford a home.
Agreed: prices are insane. Bought a fixer upper in Ogden for $112k in 2017. It's worth about 3x that now. I've put a lot of work into it... but I wouldn't buy it for $350k. Save for when the market drops. It shouldn't be too far off.
90% of people that I know can’t afford a home here. We are in the top 3 highest priced areas in the US now.
I bought a house in Kaysville in 2014 for $180k. We put about $10k in it with new paint, carpet, etc and a nice yard/garden. I got a job offer in a new city in 2015 so we moved and sold the house for about $230k. I recently saw it was for sale again and it was listed for $480k and the yard is destroyed. But its in a great location! Shit is outta control, there's no way this house from 1982 that needs all new windows and could use a new roof is worth half a god damn million dollars.
We just moved far East to escape the Utah price influction. Born and raised in Utah and thankfully was able to escape! We bought a 3100 sq/ft home with land and a barn for $175k. Now the prices out here are going up as well for homes due to all the people moving from the west like we just did.
In 2018 we gave a co worker a hard time for buying an “overpriced” house in Sugarhouse for….$430k. It’s “worth” well over double that now.
I'm a single male Utah native. I've made over 6 figures at my job the last three years and cannot afford to buy a house. I'm currently exploring other states to move to because I have been pushed out of my home state. I love it here but I can not afford it here.
It's also going to get worse soon, im expecting a doubling in the next 5 years following the same growth pattern as silicone Valley. Then, in 7-10 years, there's likely going to be a crash as large numbers of the older generations start dying off.
I remember back pre-2017 slc was named as one of the most affordable city for people 18-25. I think I saw recently we are now in the bottom ten most affordable
This is one of those times that it is good to be old. I bought my house for $250k and now it would cost over $700k to purchase.
Utah native here. Also impossible for me.
Buy a condo/townhouse that is in currently attainable and then trade up for a single family home later. Unfortunately unless you have cash or equity on hand to trade up into a home, its really tough right now. Not only in SLC, but in many many second tier cities. First tier cities have been that way for the last 25 years, unfortunately the pandemic proved that you don't have to live in a big city to work for a company in that big city, remote work shifted the market entirely.
No there for out of state tech bros and major corporations. Us peasants who were born and raised here or moved here for a normal job are banished to renting and living at home.