The 2nd quarter 2007 home prices are now available for Salt Lake County, Utah County and Davis County. On the surface everything looks OK with the vast majority of zip codes seeing their home prices showing double digit increases compared to prices in the 2nd quarter 2006.

That is until the look at the underlying data. Take the number of homes sold, in June 2007 1,366 homes were sold in Salt Lake County while June 2006 saw 1,931 sales. That’s a drop of nearly 30%.  In Utah County things are the same with 532 home sales in 2007 and 726 in 2006 (a fall of nearly 27%).

OK so maybe fewer people are listing their home and that’s why we have fewer sales? Not so there are actually more homes being listed, in Utah County for June 2007 523 homes were listed for sale and in June 2006 403. For Salt Lake County there were 1041 new listings in June 2007 and in June 2006 881.

So what does this mean? It means we are in a transitional market, going from a very strong sellers market to more of a buyers market. Homes are sitting on the market longer, inventory is increasing and sellers are having to drop their asking price.