5 Downsides To Living In Provo, Utah (And Utah County Overall)

Everybody seemed to love the article that I did about six downsides to living in Salt Lake City. So in this article, I'm going to be sharing with you five downsides to living in Provo and Utah County overall. So let's jump into it.

Now, most of the things that we're going to discuss here in this article are coming from my experience of just being in Utah County and Provo, more specifically. Now full Disclaimer. I've never lived in Provo. I've never lived in Utah County, for that matter. But I do have a pretty good experience of just being in the city overall.

I've experienced a lot of these downsides just from being there. And I can imagine that if you live there, they're going to be a little bit more prominent and some things that you're going to want to consider. So as I mentioned, we've got five items that we need to discuss here today. But before we go any further, make sure to share this article with your friends or family members who might be interested in moving here to Utah. If you're reading this article, there's a very good chance you're thinking about making a move to Salt Lake City or somewhere here along the Wasatch front.

Maybe it's Provo, Park City, Ogden, Toelle, Utah County. It could be a number of different cities here, so there's a good chance you're looking to move to one of those areas. And if you want to stay up to date on everything you need to know about what it's like to eat, sleep, live, work and play here in the area, you need to bookmark this blog site so you don't miss a thing. That's everything we talk about here on the site, and I want to see you around in future articles and listings. Also, if you think you're still going to move to Provo or to Utah County, even despite these downsides that I'm about to list for you, make sure to get in touch with me.

Call me, text me, or email me any time. I'd love to hear from you. I love when you guys reach out, and I'd love to help you make that move. My information will be written at the end of this article, so let's chat soon. All right.

The first item on our list is going to be the distance to the airport and to downtown Salt Lake.

Now, I'm grouping these two things together because these are things that you're not going to go and do every single week. You may only do it once a month or maybe even once a year. Going into downtown Salt Lake is not incredibly important. If you like the big city field, then sure, maybe you go down there a little bit more often.

But Provo kind of has its own little downtown area that has everything you need. Honestly, even people who live much closer to downtown Salt Lake never go into the city. So it's not one of the things that you have to do unless you're going to like a major sports event or concert or something like that's going to be hosted there. You might not have any reason to go there. Just keep in mind that it is a little bit of a distance.

The thing that you may end up spending more time doing is going to the airport. If you have to travel for work or if you like to just go on vacation, you're going to have a longer distance to get to the airport there. In Salt Lake City, it's about 48 miles to get to the airport, probably 45 or so from Provo to downtown Salt Lake. But that 48 miles distance to the airport does just give you a little bit of extra travel time that you really need to account for. It makes it a little bit harder to ask a friend or a family member to give you a ride just because there is a pretty good distance of driving there. So just something to consider. 

The second item on our list is the nightlife.

Now, if you've ever been to Provo, you've ever been to Utah County, you're going to know that there is basically no nightlife. You've got a couple of restaurants and they're pretty fine if you're just looking for a regular dinner. But if you want to go out late, if you're looking for drinks, if you're looking to have a good time, Utah County and Provo is not really the place to do that.

There's a good chance you'll be heading into Salt Lake County to get a bigger variety of those things. But for the most part, it's really just kind of family focus. That's just not a big part of the culture in Provo or Utah County overall. So just keep that in mind. If you're looking for nightlife, if that's your thing, you might want to consider some of these other cities.

Here in the area, most of the places closed down around 9:00 to 10:00 at night, and that's it. They don't open up until the next day. Even on the weekends, they might only be open untill10:30 pm to 11:00 pm. So if you're looking for those late nights, if you want to have that different variety, just consider some of the other cities.

The third item on our list is going to be the housing.

Let's talk a little bit about housing in Provo and kind of the general area, which I'm including kind of like Orem some of those cities to the north, and then some of the cities to the south. You're going to find a lot of older homes here in these areas, it's going to be tougher to find something new. If you want new construction, it's going to get expensive new construction. And Provo starts at about $450,000 for a single-family home. But really you should plan on spending $500,000, $600,000, $700,000, even $800,000 to get a new home in this area.

Now, that's not to say that you can't find older homes that have been remodeled that are still nice and may fit your needs. But right now, a lot of the people I'm helping coming into the state are looking for new construction. So you just got to be aware that in Provo or some of those surrounding areas, it's going to be harder to find something in that lower price range. Just make sure you're looking at that higher price range if that's what you want. Now, one caveat to that is that if you do go north, if you go up to Lehi or Saratoga Springs or Highland Alpine, you can find new construction there and it's a little bit more affordable.

Even up to Vineyard or further down south, you can find new construction. But to keep it true to this video here kind of in the Provo and immediate area, it's going to be hard to find and it's expensive.

The fourth item on the list is going to be, a little bit of a lack of diversity.

This is something that you'll want to look into. If you're moving into Utah, you're moving into Provo, or basically just any area you want to make sure that you look into what the demographics are of that particular area.

Now, I don't want to fully say this is a downside or it's an upside, or whatever. It's really going to depend on your perspective. What I really want to bring light to, though, is that you need to be aware of what to expect once you get to the area. So this is something that you should do some further research on. So you have a full understanding of what it looks like, whether that's just the demographics in general, whether it's age, it could be political group, it could be religion, it could be race, it could be whatever you want.

Just make sure you have a good idea of what you're going into in Utah. In my opinion, it does lack a little bit of diversity. So just make sure you're aware of that so it doesn't come as a complete culture shock if you do make the move to Provo or Utah County overall.

The fifth item on our list that we have to talk about here today is the inversion.

Now, the inversion is not just specific to Provo or even Utah County. It's something that we get all along with the Wasatch Font here. But I wanted to point it out here in this article, particularly because it's something that you need to know about. Everybody's concerned about the inversion. And I'm planning on making more videos and articles about what this is and how it affects our day-to-day lives and kind of the air quality that we have here in Utah.

What I want to talk about here today is that we do get inversion that comes in and a quick short story about what that is, is it's basically a high pressure of air that comes in and forces the air that's in the Valley and it keeps it down. It's not able to escape from that area. So you get this bad air quality that comes in and generally it's worse in the winter and it will stick around until we get storms that kind of come in and mix up the air. So you get this air quality that comes in, it's kind of bad and it doesn't get worse.

You've got cars running, you've got houses heating and cooling, whatever. You've got all of these emissions that are kind of going into the atmosphere. But unfortunately, because of the high pressure, they're not able to escape because we're flanked all the way around by mountains, and the air is not able to escape and bring fresh air in. So something to consider.

There is a terrible it can be on some days it can get pretty bad. But for the most part, in my opinion, I think it compares to just about any other major city. You do have days where if you've got some sensitivities, you probably want to stay inside, you want to get good air filters on your house and in your car. You want to do the best you can to kind of mitigate that. But to be honest, in my opinion, I think it's just as bad as any other major city.

So it's something that it's not like it's every single day. It's not like you're living right next to a power plant and the air is just terrible every day. But it is one of those things that kind of fluctuates. So just make sure you're aware that we do have inversion. As I said, it's generally worse in the winter.

That's when you're really going to notice it. And when those times come, you can't wait for summer to roll around to get out of that. So it's a great time to escape to the mountains, to go skiing, go snowshoeing, ice climbing, whatever, just to kind of get out of town and get out of that bad air quality. So just something to consider there. If you are concerned about the inversion or if you've got bad lungs or this is just a big factor for you, make sure to just take that into account.

You might want to look into other cities. Park City, Heber City, Kamas. Those are to the east of the Wasatch front. That would technically be the Wasatch back, I guess, even though nobody says that. But you're going to find much cleaner air up in that area.

So that might be something that you'd want to consider as going east or even possibly west to some of these other cities if the air quality is a major concern to you. So if you do have concerns about air quality, if you're looking for cities that you're going to be able to get out of that. Reach out to me if you're thinking about making that move here, reach out to me as well. My information is listed down below. Call me, text me, email me, and get a hold of me anyway that you need to so we can talk about what you need in a new home and what you're going to be looking for in that new city that you moved to.

I can't wait to hear from you. I'll catch you guys in the next one.

Cody Steck, Realtor
Real Broker, LLC
801- 244- 2297
Cody@fastutahhomes.com