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A strong fourth quarter of 2016 left Salt Lake County's residential real estate business as healthy as it's been since the Great Recession.
Sales of single-family homes rose 1.3 percent last year, to 13,600, said Salt Lake Board of Realtors spokesman Dave Anderton, "the third highest level in the county's history, exceeded only by the pre-recessionary years of 2006 and 2007."
Boosting last year's final total was a 5.1 percent jump in fourth-quarter sales. The median sale price of those homes was $290,000, Anderton noted, nearly $21,000, or 7.8 percent, more than a year earlier.
The strong showing by Salt Lake County, which accounts for 44 percent of home sales along the Wasatch Front, helped lift the five-county area.
During the quarter, Wasatch Front home sales shot up 9 percent in number and 6 percent in value, to $270,000.
"The most popular areas were ZIP codes with more affordable home prices," Anderton said, citing purchase numbers in Clearfield, Tooele, Farr West, Taylorsville and Lehi.
In Salt Lake County, for instance, the 84118 ZIP code that straddles Taylorsville and Kearns had more fourth-quarter home sales than any other area in the county. The number of sales there was up 18 percent, to 217, while the median price of those homes went up nearly 13 percent, to $218,000.
Coming in second was 84096 in Herriman, where 167 homes sold during the quarter at a median price of $325,000 — a 1.6 percent increase.
Salt Lake County's highest home prices once again were recorded in 84103, which includes Federal Heights and the upper Avenues.
Fifty-one homes sold there last quarter, for a median price of $525,000, up 18.6 percent from $442,500 in the last three months of 2015.
Honors for the highest-price Wasatch Front ZIP code remain with Utah County, however.
The 22 homes sold in Alpine's 84004 ZIP code went for a median price of $607,000, a 7.5 percent spike from a year earlier.
Eden, a bucolic community in the Ogden Valley, was next on the list, with a median sale price of $472,450, up 13 percent in a year.
In the fourth quarter, price declines were recorded in three of Salt Lake County's 36 ZIP codes. The dips were minimal in Draper (1 percent) and Sandy (0.7 percent in ZIP code 84092), but reached 3.8 percent in ZIP code 84108, which runs along Salt Lake City's east bench south of the University of Utah. The median home price there was $476,000, down $19,000 from a year earlier.
While Salt Lake County accounted for 44 percent of quarterly home sales, 22 percent took place in Utah County. The number of home sales there rose 9.4 percent year over year, with prices going up 2.2 percent, to $275,000.
Davis County flourished in the fourth quarter, the median price of a home climbing 9.5 percent, to $268,260. Tooele County was not far behind, the median price of $218,000 representing a 9.25 percent bump.
Weber County shared in the wealth, Anderton noted, with a 14 percent quarterly leap in sales contributing to a 10.8 percent rise in prices (to $200,000 for a home).
Board of Realtors figures also showed that a solid market existed for condominiums.
The median price of the 932 condos that sold last quarter in Salt Lake County was $210,000, up 7.7 percent over the last three months of 2015.
Weber County had the highest percentage gain, with sales prices shooting up 14.7 percent to $140,000, while condos sold for a median price of $190,000 in Davis County, 10 percent more than a year earlier.
Home prices by ZIP code
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