Salt Lake City Real Estate Blog

The new model home village is up and running in Daybreak. The village called Daybreak North Shore, is Daybreak’s third, the first two being Founders Village and East Lake Village. There is a noticeable difference in this phase, there are far more homes in the starter home category. If you are looking for homes under $200,000, Daybreak offers far more opportunities in North Shore than in the previous phases. (more…)

At the start of this month, Fannie Mae changed its policy regarding declining markets. Previously if you were in a declining market you had to put 10% down in order to obtain a loan. Now the policy has changed so that regardless of the state of the local real estate market buyers only need to put 5% down, i.e. they can obtain a 95% mortgage instead of a 90% mortgage. This change will obviously make it easier for first time buyers to enter the market and hopefully create an increased demand at the low end of the market.

The number of single family homes sold in Salt Lake County increased for the fourth-straight month. There were 835 homes sold in May, which was an increase of 4.11% over April’s numbers. While the numbers are still way down on last years numbers (in fact year to date they are 37% lower), at least the number of homes sold seems to have stabilized. Even with the increase in the number of homes sold, home prices for properties over $300,000 remain under pressure.

May 2008 - 835
Apr 2008 - 802
Mar 2008 - 765
Feb 2008 - 585
Jan 2008 – 507

Looking forward, as of today there are currently 1415 single-family homes under contract in Salt Lake County. While a good number of these will fall out of contract, the high number suggests that we will build upon May’s numbers and return an increase in homes sold for June 2008.

If you are looking for a place to rent, Salt Lake is an expensive place. Rents went up 8.8% from 2006 to 2007, with a further 6 to 8% rise expected this year. This coupled with a vacancy rate of just 4.5% means tough times for those looking for a rental property. (more…)