Good news for Daybreak residents, Kennecott today announced the first Businesses set to occupy Daybreak Utah’s SoDa Row Village Center. They will be:
Black Diamond Gymnastics and Sport Centers – Will provide gymnastics, dance, cheer and martial arts. It also offers the Kids Klub after school enrichment program, off-track camps for kids, birthday parties, special events and an academic preschool and tutoring program.
Tio’s Mexican Restaurant – A local Mexican restaurant with one other location currently open in Murray.
Classic Cleaners – Dry cleaners priding itself on being an environmentally sensitive cleaner. This will be Classic Cleaners third location in the Valley.
Zion’s Bank – No explanation needed for this one.
Guy’s Barbershop – Guy’s Barbershop will open its first location offering haircuts and straight razor shaves in a traditional one-chair shop.
Oopsie Daisy –A children’s boutique offering distinctive children’s clothes, shoes, gifts and furniture.
San Gelato Café – Italian café offering gelato, panini and many other Italian treats.
Looking at the list one of the things I really like, is the lack of chains (with the exception of Zion’s), all the businesses are locally run and operated.
There are a couple of noticeable businesses missing from the list. Rumors were that a brew pub and sports bar was due to be part of the village center. I am not sure how true these rumors were, but I hope that these businesses have not had to be scraped due to Utah’s lack of available liquor licenses. The press release did say that there will be more announcements over the coming weeks, so maybe they will be announced then.
Tags: Daybreak Utah, Daybreak Village Center, SoDa Row Village Center
A new report produced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) said Utah has the best economic outlook of any U.S. State. The report shows that those states which were eager to increase spending during the good times and have a high tax burden, are now suffering the most and those that controlled their budget are now in the best position to come out of the downturn first.
While Utah came at the top of the list, New York earned the dubious distinction of having the worst economic outlook. Maybe this has something to do with the 137 proposed tax increases currently being considered.
TOP FIVE STATES
1. Utah
2. Colorado
3. Arizona
4. Virginia
5. South Dakota
BOTTOM FIVE STATES
46. New Jersey
47. Maine
48. Rhode Island
49. Vermont
50. New York
Tags: Utah Economy
May 2009 saw the number of homes sales in Salt Lake County go up for the forth straight month. There were 960 homes sold in May, compared to 850 in April. Another good sign was that the price per square foot increased for the second month in a row, and now stands at $102 per square foot compared to a recent low of $98 in March 2009. This means that the prices of homes are actually increasing. The number of days on market (how long it takes to sell a home), did increase slightly from last month, but is still down from its peak of 89 in March 2009.
Looking at the not so good side of the Salt Lake housing market, the number of short sale listings as jumped in recent months, and it remains to be seen what impact this will have on the homes sales stats in the near future.
Total Sales 960
Average List Price $273,835
Average Sale Price $264,290
Sale Vs List 97%
Average Sq. Ft. 2,602
Price Per Sq. Feet $104
Days on Market 85
Tags: Home Prices, Home Sales, Homes Sold, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake County Home Prices, Salt Lake Housing Market
Ivory homes are building a new over 55’s community located in South Jordan’s Daybreak development. The community just like Daybreak itself will be big, in fact when finished it will be the largest Active Adult Community in Utah. Garden Park will feature approximately 200 single level living homes, and will have its own facilities including a lap pool, fitness facilities, and park. The development is located just to the north of the Kennecott office building, on the southwest corner of Oquirrh Lake. The development is conveniently located close to the currently under construction SoDa Row Village Center (due to be completed in Sep 2009), and soon to be constructed TRAX light rail.
The initial phase of Garden Park will feature two styles of home. Garden Homes are rambler style homes that feature single level living, and a basement. While Cottages are slab-on-grade rambler homes (no basement), with a shared common grass area. Home prices start in the mid $200’s.
Tags: Active Adult Community, Daybreak Utah, Daybreak Village Center, Garden Park, Ivory Homes, New Home Builders, New Home Developments, Over 55's Community, Salt Lake County, SoDa Row Village Center
The west side of the South Jordan located Daybreak development has always been earmarked for commercial development, and hi-tech companies seem to be sitting up and taking note. Attracted by Daybreak’s fiber optic infrastructure eBay have already announced plans to open a building in Daybreak’s commerce park.
The project to build a ‘next generation’ data center is expected to create around 50 jobs and will be designed with a focus on reducing its environmental impact. These efficiencies will be generated from a number of technologies incorporated into the mechanical and electrical systems of the facility including a water side economizer that uses outside air to cool water versus motorized chillers and variable speed drives
to run fans and chillers on an on-demand basis. Additionally, rainwater will be used to supply the cooling tower and for landscape irrigation.
Also in the news is that eBay plan to close its Vancouver Canada Service Center and increase the number of employees at its Draper Utah facility.
Prices have been announced for the downtown Salt Lake City Creek Condo developments and as you may expect they are expensive. Prices range from $500 to $800 per square foot. To put this in perspective in the first quarter 2009, just 5 condos were sold in the entire downtown area, with an average price per square foot of just $205. That puts the starting price of a City Creek Condo at approximately 150 percent more than the current cost of a downtown condo.
Now don’t get me wrong the City Creek development will be a quality development and probably deserves to be sold at a premium to other condos, but given the current state of the real estate market, it does not seem how such a high premium can be justified.
There are currently two options available if you want to purchase a condo in the City Creek development, The Regent and Richards Court (which in turn is split into Richards Court East and West). Richards Court is located at the gateway between Temple Square and City Creek, the development is comprised of two ten story buildings flanking a tree lined promenade through which flows City Creek. The Regent is a 20 story ultra modern looking building located at the south end of the City Creek Center project on 100 South.
Tags: Condo Developments, Downtown Condos, Home Prices, New Home Developments, Salt Lake Condos
The number of homes sold in Salt Lake County continued to climb in March 2009, with 713 homes sold, up from the 585 sold in the previous month. While these month on month increases are an encouraging sign, homes prices continue to fall, with the price per square foot falling into double digits for the first time since Jan 2006.
Since the peak of the housing market in June 2007 the price per square foot has fallen nearly 24%, while the average sales price has only fallen 12.52%. These figures indicate that people are opting to buy bigger homes rather than smaller cheaper homes. This is further reinforced by the size of the average home sold, which has increase from 2,255 to 2,640 sq. feet over the same time period.
Total Sales 713
Average List Price $269,376
Average Sale Price $260,188
Sale Vs List 97%
Average Sq. Ft. 2,640
Price Per Sq. Feet $99
Days on Market 89
Tags: Home Prices, Home Sales, Homes Sold, Housing Market, Salt Lake County Home Prices, Salt Lake Housing Market
There is now a new Utah State incentive of $6000 dollars for home buyers, but it comes with limitations and in my opinion a major drawback. Unlike other incentives introduced at the federal level, the State incentive is limited to new construction homes. Now this is great if you are looking to buy a new home, but does nothing if you are currently trying to sell your own home. In fact I believe this will have a detrimental effect on the current housing market and here is why.
The reason the Utah housing market is currently suffering is because there are more sellers than buyers. This is a basic rule of economics, whenever there are more buyers than sellers then prices go up, and whenever there are more sellers than buyers, prices go down.
So what will the impact of the new incentive be? I believe it will make matters worse, instead of decreasing the inventory of homes for sale, it may well increase it. That is because when an existing home is sold it usually triggers a chain, person buys home A, whose owner buys home B, whose owner buys home C etc. So one sale, actually results in multiple sales. However, when someone buys a new home there is no chain. In fact it is worse than that, in the current climate builders are reluctant to build spec homes, so when someone buys a new home they have to build a home, which means a new home sale reduces the inventory by zero.
For those that are interested here are some details on the intentive:
The one thing I would say is that if you are interested, unless you close in the next couple of months you will miss out. There are only a limit number of grants available and they are running out fast.
Tags: Home Buyers, Home Prices, Tax Incentive, Utah Housing Market, Utah Real Estate
Salt Lake County home sales for February 2009 saw a rebound from January’s disastrous numbers. There were 566 homes sold, which is a 30.11% increase over January 2009 figures, but a 24.83% decline year on year. The average sale price for homes sold was $263,048, which is a drop of 2.07% over the same time last year.
One noticeable statistic is the price per square foot, which has declined from $119 in Feb 2008 to $103 in Feb 2009, which is a drop of 13.45%. Because the average home price is declining at a far slower rate than the price per sq. ft., this implies that people are choosing to buy larger homes, which to some extent may be disguising the true drop in home prices.
Total Sales 566
Average List Price $272,977
Average Sale Price $262,482 (268,024)
Sale Vs List 96%
Average Sq. Ft. 2,563
Price Per Sq. Feet $103
Days on Market 89
Tags: Home Prices, Homes Sold, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake County Home Prices
Home prices along the Wasatch Front, while not great at least faired better than much of the U.S. In 2008, Salt Lake County home prices went down just 3.71%, with the new median home price for single-family homes now standing at $240,000. Homes at the low end of the ladder faired much better than those above $250,000, where because of tighter lending requirements and a large number of available higher end new homes, suffered far steeper declines. Most of the worst hit areas were in the more expensive zip codes, with the worst hit being Holladay 84117, which declined 14.29%.
Not all areas went down; four zip codes actually returned an increase in value, with the Salt Lake City 84116 area returning the best result with a gain of 5.39%.
Although home prices are still coming under pressure, the relative good local economy and the fact that local home prices did not see the huge increases seen in other areas, means that we should continue to fair better than most of the rest of the U.S.
Tags: Annual Home Prices, Davis County Home Prices, Home Prices, Homes Sold, Housing Market, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake County Home Prices, Salt Lake Homes, Salt Lake Housing Market, Utah County, Utah County Home Prices