With the recent economic downturn there’s been a lot of fear and concern regarding the housing market. Well, I’m here to tell you real estate in Logan Utah is weathering the storm quite nicely. Like many markets in Utah, home sales have declined in Logan, but considerably less than most other Utah markets. With a reasonable unemployment rate, many of Logan’s residents have been able to afford their mortgages to maintain a semi-healthy real estate market.

The best sign that Logan’s market is weathering the storm is the amount of foreclosures. Currently there are only twelve Logan Utah foreclosures on the market out of a total of 269 properties. With a ratio like that, the distressed properties that are pushing home values down in other markets aren’t having the same affect here in Logan. The best thing we can hope for is to maintain a small amount of distressed homes, and that includes short sales.

Short sales have a higher market share than foreclosures in Logan, yet I still feel they are at a healthy level. There are currently eighteen Logan Utah short sales on the market making a total of thirty properties where homeowners lost their home to foreclosure are facing a short sale situation. At any given time, the distressed property market makes up only 11-13% of the market share.

As a home buyer this means your home is going to hold value long term. Distressed properties suppress values due to banks selling them for less than what a normal home owner would. Knowing that Logan is one of the few markets in the entire nation with such a low distressed property rate, you should have confidence in your home purchase. The only problem home buyers should face in our market is choosing where to live.

There are some great areas to live in Logan from The Island just below Utah State University where you can find cheaper homes within just a few minutes drive to the university, to Cliffside with some of Logan’s most expensive housing options. If you want luxury, the Quail Bluff neighborhood provides some of Logan’s most exclusive properties within a gated community.

Nature provides a beauty that humans can’t, and Logan is full of spectacular mountain views, unrivaled hiking and biking trails in the famous Logan Canyon, and the starting point for a most enjoyable adventure for bikers called The Lotoja. The views of Logan’s mountian ranges are absolutely stunning and can be seen from anywhere in the valley.

If you’re worried about housing prices don’t be, with a median house value under $170,000 home prices are quite affordable. There are many options for any home buyer from the the smaller first time homes just west of downtown that are all priced under $160,000 with many even being under the $100k mark. To the many condo and townhome developments such as the luxury townhomes in Lexington Village to the small first time home buyer condos at Blackhawk.

If you’re looking for a place that provides affordable housing, a safe community, and world class outdoor activities Logan, Utah is a great choice. We have great snow in the winter for skiing at Beaver Mountain and endless fun filled days in the summer swimming at first dam. If you don’t enjoy getting wet or skiing, you’ll love the many restaurants Logan has to offer including the best Italian restaurant in Northern, Utah at Le Nonne’s.

This article was provided by Lisa Udy principal broker of Platinum Real Estate Group in Logan, Utah. If you’re looking for Logan Utah homes for sale please visit Lisa’s real estate website at www.LisaUdy.com.

The number of foreclosed homes being bought and sold in Utah is falling significantly, a new RealtyTrac report indicated.

In Utah, foreclosed homes accounted for just over 20 percent homes sold during the third quarter, with the avarage sales prices of properties that sold while in some stage of foreclosure was 3 percent below the average home sales price. This compares to 25% of homes at a national level, sold at a 32% discounted price.

The relativly low discounted price of foreclosed homes is a sign of the stabilizing Utah housing market.

The number of Utah homes in some stage of forcloser fell 30% from the previous quarter and 21% from the same time last year.

At the end of this year’s third quarter, the percent of Utah loans that had been foreclosed (bank-owned) fell to 3.23 percent, down from 3.35 percent in the second quarter.

Foreclosures had been climbing in Utah for the past three years — since the third quarter of 2007 when the rate was at 0.66 percent. Utah’s foreclosure rate peaked in the first quarter of 2010 at 3.43 percent, according to the MBA report. Since then, Utah’s foreclosure rate has steadily fallen over the past two quarters.

You can read this post about Utah Home Foreclosures and other posts on my real estate blog.

While it may seem like a far-fetched idea (especially if you are trying to sell your home at the moment), an increasing number of economists are predicting a housing shortage in 2011/2012. How you might ask, can we have a shortage of homes given the current sluggish housing market? Well it’s all got to do with the number of homes that need to be built, just to keep up with basic demand.

Every year demand is created for housing for various reasons, people get married, people get divorced, children leave home and some homes are even condemned and torn down. The fact is that the number of new homes currently being constructed in the U.S. is not enough to keep up with this natural burn rate. Of course this is a good thing; a shortage of new home builds means the inventory of new construction homes currently standing empty should start to decrease.
Take Utah for an example, James Wood, director of the Bureau of Economic Business Research, estimates that 20,000 new households are being created statewide every year. But the inventory of housing units is only increasing at 10,000 units. This should mean that the inventory of homes for sale (both new construction and resale homes) should decrease by 10,000 per year.

Of course these figures don’t take into account the additional housing supply created by families leaving their current home and either moving into rented accommodation or moving in with relatives/friends. Given this the housing recovery is also dependent upon people retaining their current home.

Obviously the rate of absorption of the housing inventory will differ depending upon geographic area. Somewhere like Arizona, where there are entire ghost towns of new construction homes, will take longer to reduce their inventory than other places (like the Salt Lake Housing Market) where fewer homes were built.

While I am no economist and cannot predict when the housing turnaround will occur, sooner or later the pent up demand and shortage of new home builds will lead to a recovery. In fact William Wheaton, professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes that when the market recovers, “Housing construction will not only rise, but it will stay high for a while, which didn’t happen in previous recoveries”.

You can read the original Housing Shortage article on my Salt Lake Real Estate Blog.

March was a little bit of a mixed bag when it comes to Salt Lake County home sales. On the bright side the month on month days on market (average time taken to sell a home) decreased from 87 to 80, number of homes sold increased 30.09% year on year and over 51% month on month. On the down side the average home price continued to fall, declining 9.37% year on year, and the price per square ft. fell to $98.

Looking forward, given current market activity, we should see a nice increase in home sales over the next few months as people rush to claim their home buyer’s tax credit.

Total Sales 964
Average List Price $240,561
Average Sale Price $233,322
Sale Vs List 97%
Average Sq. Ft. 2,474
Price Per Sq. Feet $98
Days on Market 80

You can read this post about Salt Lake County Home Prices and other posts on our real estate blog.

Compared to the national average, Utah has fewer homes in negative equity — where someone’s mortgage is more than the current value of their home. At the end of the third quarter 2009 approximately 18% of residential Utah homes were underwater, while the national average was 23%.

One of the worst hit areas was in the neighboring state of Nevada, where 65% of residential properties were underwater.

One reason for Utah’s better than average negative equity rate, was that during the property boom the level of housing speculation was not nearly as great as that seen in other states. This kept our home appreciation at a lower level. It also helps that we have one of the lowest unemployment levels in the U.S.

Data provided by American First CoreLogic.

Just a quick note to let you know that the Utah Governor recently announced they will use $8 million in federal stimulus funds to reintroduce the Home Run Grant.

The official statement said that the state will offer $4,000 grants to the first 2,000 new home buyers.

The program comes on the heels of one started by former Gov. Jon Huntsman, who used $10 million in stimulus funds offer $6,000 grants. These grants were used in less than 12 weeks, so if you are interested in taking advantage of this offer you had better hurry.

There is one major difference between the original grant and this one (apart from the amount). The original grant could only be issued for homes that were ready for occupancy, while the new one can issued for homes which have been contracted for construction, or partially finished and contracted for completion. This changes the focus of the grant from getting rid of new home inventory to building new homes.

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.

In a recent study by the Utah Association of Realtors, when people were asked what are the top three challenges in the Utah Housing Market, the number one response was ‘lack of housing affordability’. Second was the ‘current state of the economy’ and third was ‘difficulty in getting a loan’.

The question is, is this perception of lack of housing affordability real, or is it more based on what people get used to, rather than actually facts. Let’s take gas prices as an example. When gas was $4.00 a gallon people believed that gas was outrageous, when it dropped to $3,00 it seemed cheap, and now it is back down to $1.50 or so, its really cheap. But gas prices are just back to the prices we saw 4 years ago. Therefore, what was the norm 4 years ago is now seen as really cheap.

Other interesting findings were that 69 percent said they believed ‘buying a home in Utah at this time was a good investment’ (this seems to contradict the housing affordability answer), and 61% of people said that ‘the Utah real estate market was healthier than in other states’.

The Salt Lake Board of Realtors has questioned a recent report by RealtyTrac, which reported the home foreclosure rate in Utah increasing 294% in July 2008 (compared to July 2007). The report ranked Utah as the 9th largest foreclosure rate in the U.S. However, it is believed that the methodology used to calculate the figures might include loan payment defaults (30 days or more late), inflating the actual count.

In comparison, the Mortgage Bankers Association released data that said 99% of loans were not in foreclosure (although it should be noted that this data was for the first quarter not July).

All I can say is ‘Lies, Dam Lies and Statistics’, it just goes to show that you can make statistics says whatever you want.

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.