Gov. Spencer Cox’s son recently showed him a listing for a three-bedroom home at $275,000.
It was in Indiana.
“I don’t want my grandkids to be in Indiana,” Cox told a packed auditorium Wednesday afternoon during the 2025 Ivory Prize Summit. “That’s a failure if the only reason they are looking to move to Indiana is because they want to have a house.”
His children are among thousands of Utahns who can’t afford to buy a home.
Cox has made housing a priority, to include highlighting it in his State of the State address in late January, when he strung together a dozen reasons why Utah’s future needs to be “built here.”
He announced plans ahead of the 2024 legislative session to add 35,000 starter houses to the state’s housing stock by the end of 2028.
Since then, developers across the state have built and sold 5,801 starter homes as of September, according to a state dashboard. That’s up from 5,100 in May.
Cox’s push for thousands of starter homes comes as Utah faces a massive housing shortage, high interest rates and a lag in construction.
A recent report estimates the state will be more than 200,000 homes short of demand in 30 years unless policymakers and lawmakers make changes.
The lack of supply has lead home prices in Utah to rapidly increase.
As of September, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the median listing price for a home in Utah was $590,000 — the eighth highest market in the nation.
Data from the Utah Association of Realtors indicates a lower median sales price at $510,000.
Cox acknowledged the state has “a long ways to go” to meet his initiative.
There have been several challenges, he said, but those challenges weren’t unexpected.
The biggest barrier is the government, the governor said – specifically, land use well-intentioned regulations and the permitting process that causes delays.
“We have to deregulate to allow people to build what they want to build, where they want to build it,” Cox said.
He hopes some things will help, especially the cuts in federal interest rates and efforts to make it easier to build and provide more infrastructure funding.
Still, Cox said, increasing the number of homes is the ultimate solution to the state’s housing woes.
“Supply side, all the time, forever,” he said. “That’s the only way to do this.”
Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.