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.

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’.

We recently had an appraisal done on an existing home in a subdivision that still has new homes being constructed. When speaking to the appraiser, I mentioned that the builder had a recent sale of exactly the same model of home in the same subdivision that was not on the MLS. In the past, appraisers were often able to use HUD-1 Settlement Statements in their appraisals. However, according to this appraiser, they are no longer allowed to use HUD-1 Settlement Statements.

Now, in most places, this might not be an issue. But Utah is a non-disclosure state, which means comparable sales used by appraisers are either in the MLS, or the appraiser might be able to request HUD-1 Settlement Statements if a builder is not using the MLS. In some areas, there are many small builders (and some bigger ones) who do not use the MLS. I think this could become a real issue for appraisers trying to find recent sales in order to calculate a homes value.

Has anyone else heard this and what do you think?

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.

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.