Salt Lake City Real Estate Blog

While places like California and Florida saw their home prices decline over the last year, Utah was a different story. Home prices for the fourth quarter 2007 went up 9.27% compared to the same quarter in 2006, which was the largest increase in all 50 states. What’s more, that was the fifth consecutive quarter Utah led the nation in house price appreciation.

At a city level, four out of the top 10 cities were in Utah, Salt Lake City no. 7, Ogden-Clearfield no. 4, Provo-Orem no. 6 and Logan was no. 8.

However, all good things come to an end. The Utah housing market has slowed considerably over the last couple of quarters and the home sales data for the first quarter 2008 is due to show a considerable tightening of the market. The number of homes sold is way down on last year’s numbers, (for example, 687 in Feb 2008 compared to 1,148 in Feb 2007) and the days on market are climbing accordingly.

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.