This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Wasatch Front's residential real estate market continues to show signs of improvement, but both sales and prices in most areas remain below last year's levels, a new report shows.
In Salt Lake County, 1,806 existing single-family homes were sold in the first quarter of the year, down just under 1 percent from 1,819 in the same quarter a year ago, the Salt Lake Board of Realtors reported Tuesday. The median selling price in the January-March period was $200,000, down nearly 8 percent from the same three-month period in 2010.
Prices also were down year-over-year in Davis, Utah, Weber and Tooele counties, between about 5 percent and nearly 12 percent.
Realtors attribute the declines over the past year to the expiration of the federal home-buying tax credit, which boosted sales in last year's first quarter, only to cause a drop off in sales after the credit expired in April 2010.
The residential real estate market along the Wasatch Front began to decline in the summer of 2007; 2009 was one of the worst years ever for home sales.
Home sales in the first quarter of 2011 were up 27 percent compared to the 1,425 homes that sold in the first quarter of 2009. While sales are up from that year, prices are not.
Median selling prices in Salt Lake County, now at $200,000, are down from $242,000 in the first quarter of 2009.
Typically in a downturn, sales recover first, then prices. The Salt Lake Board of Realtors believes that because home sales in the first quarter were about the same as last year — 1,806 compared to 1,819 — prices should stop falling soon.
"The market seems to have hit bottom and is stabilizing," said board President DeAnna Dipo.
Salt Lake City economist Jeff Thredgold, a consultant with Zions Bank, said he wouldn't be surprised to see home prices along the Wasatch Front stop falling by late this year or early 2012.
"Everyone is disappointed it just keeps taking longer and longer for the housing market to stabilize," Thredgold said. "But we still have high level of foreclosures and distressed properties, which are a drag on the market. And they aren't going to go away anytime soon."
According to foreclosure-listing company RealtyTrac, Utah is one of the top five states most hard hit by the nation's foreclosure crisis, along with Arizona, Nevada, California and Florida.
Combined with other factors, such as tighter lending standards, the home-sale market remains burdened by a large supply of homes for sale and weak demand among buyers —even with average 30-year mortgage rates remaining just under 5 percent.
Thredgold noted that Utah's real estate downturn began later than in many other parts of the country, and the recovery will occur later as well.
But even in other parts of the country, the recovery has yet to take hold. Nationally, the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index shows that home prices continue to fall in most major U.S. cities.
For many, the end of falling home prices can't come soon enough.
Heather Peeters of Murray has seen her and her husband's incomes shrink during the recession as the restaurants they work for have been affected by reduced consumer spending. The couple, which is seeking a loan modification from their mortgage company in an effort to keep up with their monthly payments, also have seen their home value fall by about $30,000.
"The last time we opened our [property] assessment, it was down again," Peeters said. "It's been steadily going down the last couple of years, so it hasn't been that much of a surprise."
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