Salt Lake City Real Estate Blog

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…)

The Salt Lake high-end housing market recently received a boost, when conforming loan limit went up from $417,000 to $729,750 in Salt Lake County, Tooele County, and Summit County.

This increase means that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can now provide loans up to $729,750, which should result in a much-needed boost to the Utah housing market. High-end homes have recently undergone a slowdown, mainly because lenders shutdown the Jumbo Loan market as part of the sub-prime scare. Lenders have since discovered that Jumbo Loans are not the real problem, and are now starting to relax lending requirements. This coupled with the new lending limits should hopefully put some much-needed life into Salt Lake’s high-end real estate market. Many home buyers will now be able to take out a single loan, without the need to take out a jumbo loan, with their high interest rates and down payment requirements.

In addition to Fanny and Freddie raising their limits, FHA loan limits also went up from $364,000 to $729,750, further opening up finance options to home buyers.

To determine how these changes will affect you, we recommend that you seek the advice of a mortgage professional. Alternately, you can post your question here, and we will get a mortgage professional to reply.

Here is an interesting article in the Utah Business Magazine on why Utah real estate may not suffer the same as Florida, California and most of the rest of the country. It explains that we are now in more of a balanced market with home prices still increasing, and that the strong economic growth is helping limit any downturn in the local real estate market.

It also touches on one of my pet peeves, where local media report on the national real estate market like it is the local market. When people see that home prices are falling in Florida and California of course they are going to get worried, particularly when the report does not explain that the market is not like this in Utah.