Massive Price Jumps In Utah (How It Compares To Other States)

Real estate prices jump in Utah over the past two years and how it compares to California

Today, we're talking about the massive price jumps that we've seen here in Utah and how it compares to Southern California.

We're going to cover some really important information. Now, I came across this thought because I had somebody reach out to me, which, by the way, if you're thinking about moving here, reach out to me. I love talking to people from all over. (My information is below!) So I had somebody reach out to me and they said, man, prices have gone up so much in Utah, it's almost as expensive as California. And honestly, this isn't the first time that I've heard this. I've actually had a number of clients who have reached out to me in the past say the same exact thing.

They look at houses here, they think about moving, and then they end up just staying in California because Utah has gotten so expensive that it almost doesn't even look like a deal. Now, I don't think that's the full picture because I think you have to take into account other things like the political climate, the people, the weather, the recreation and the taxes. There's a lot of differences between California and Utah. So although prices might be the same, there are other benefits that you might experience by moving here to Utah. So if you're making that move here, you can't consider just the prices straight across.

In the past, a lot of people got out of California to move here to Utah because it was cheaper. But that's just not the case anymore. You really have to consider those other factors to make sure it's the right move for you. So let's jump into some actual data here on this. So look at an article from the Los Angeles Times.

It is reported here that in Los Angeles County, the median home price rose 12% to tie a record of $795,000. Now, I believe this is for single family homes. It doesn't exactly specify. 

They just say the median home price. Sometimes that gets grouped in with condos and townhomes and single family homes. I don't know for sure, but I'm just going to assume that it's just talking about single family homes for the purpose of this video here. And this article is from October, I believe, so it is a couple of months old here at this point.

But for what it's worth, I wanted to point that out here that the prices may be different depending on when you're watching this video. So in Orange County, the median home price rose to $890,000, Riverside was at $527,000, San Bernardino was at $463,000, San Diego County was $740,000, and in Ventura County, it was $725,000. 

So with the exception of Riverside and San Bernardino, it looks like we have kind of a nice middle ground here between $700,000 and $900,000. You could say really like between the 750-800k range right between Los Angeles County, San Diego and Ventura, which I know they're spread out. They don't cover all the same areas. So for all you Californians out there who are going to yell at me for that, I'm aware of that. But for the purpose of this, it looks like we've kind of got a nice range there, let's say somewhere in that 700k to maybe 900k range for these counties here. 

Now if we look at information for Utah specifically, and narrow it down to Single family homes in Salt Lake county, looking at the month of December. We're going to look at this data here, although the information we're looking at for that article from La Times was from October. We're just going to go ahead and look at the latest information here in the last couple of months here for Salt Lake County.

So here in Salt Lake County, the median home price has been around the $550,000 for the last couple of months. In June it was $550,000. July, $550,000.

In August, it actually dropped just a hair to $545,000, September was at $515,000, October at $545,000 and November at $550,000. Now, this is really interesting. I would have never guessed if you told me, hey, over the past six months, the market has been kind of flat when it comes to single family homes in Salt Lake. I would have never guessed that this is the case. There's more lower priced homes that are selling and this is bringing the median down and there's less high end homes that are selling.

If we look at what happened last year, we did see a little bit of the same, but we actually did see an increase. If we look at last year, June of 2020, it went from $420,000 and climbed up to about $450,000 through December. But it was not a huge increase.

So right here, September to November seems to be kind of flat for us here in Salt Lake. Now jumping over to the information for Davis County. We are now looking at Davis county, which is the county to the north of Salt Lake. So that's going to cover everything from Bountiful Centerville, it's going to cover Farmington, Kaysville, Fruit Heights, those cities up North of Salt Lake.

So you can see here that the median single family home sales price has been around that $500,000 mark. Again, kind of the same information that we're seeing here it is $494,000 in June, $500,000 in July, $500,000. So here in Davis County, we're seeing a little bit lower than what we saw in Salt Lake County by about $50,000. But we're still way under what we actually saw in California.

So if you're coming from Riverside, you might be looking at this and thinking, it's just as expensive. However, if you're coming from Orange County, you're probably thinking, yeah, it's still kind of a deal to buy something in Utah. So it's all perspective. It's all relative to what you're actually looking at.

The last thing I want to share is info on Utah County, which is where you have Provo, Lehi, Saratoga Springs, that is all part of Utah County. If we look at single family homes here, it is still below what we see in Salt Lake. And you can see here for the past six months, we're in that low $500,000 range. So $525,000 then to $535,000 then to  $537,000. And then $550,000 is the latest information in November.

And it looks like we're climbing up to about $560,000 here in December. We'll see how it looks when the month actually closes out. So really interesting information here to see where the prices are at and how it compares to California.

Real quick, I've gotta mention it again. I absolutely love when you guys reach out to me about your upcoming move. I help people from literally all across the world, all across the nation. But even as far as Europe, South Africa, Japan, the Middle East, literally all across the world, make a move right here to Salt Lake. And I absolutely love it. So if you're thinking about making that move, reach out. I'd love to talk to you about your specific situation. 

Now, the thing that you really have to consider when it comes to the move from California or any other state for that matter.

Prices have jumped up really significantly over the past couple of years here in Utah. But you also have to look at the other factors.

You have to look at what the taxes are. We have a state income tax rate of 4.95%, and our property taxes are very low, usually about 0.5% of the property value.

So if you've got a million dollar home, you can roughly expect to pay about $5,000 a year in property taxes. So that's one thing you have to think about. We are also very business friendly here in Utah. So that's another positive for big and small companies

You also have to look at the recreation, the entertainment, the altitude difference, the weather. Maybe you want the four seasons, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring.

You have to look at all of these different factors if you're thinking about making that move here. So it's not only just about the prices. Yes, that is going to be a major factor in your decision to make that move here. But it shouldn't be the only one. Right?

The one last thing we need to talk about here is where are prices going to go? Are we going to exceed California? Are we going to see massive price jumps?

I don't know. I think about this a lot, and I think let's say you've got a $600,000 house. It seems totally unrealistic to think, yes, my house could be worth $800,000 in three years or five years, whatever that number may be. It seems totally unrealistic to think that. But there's a good chance that could actually happen, right? That's exactly what we saw over the past couple of years.

If you asked me two years ago, hey, I've got a $500,000 house. Do you think it will be worth $750,000 in 2 years? I would have said absolutely no way. However, I'm seeing houses out there that were $550,000 just two years ago that are now selling for $800,000 or even $900,000 depending on location. So that's over $300,000 in equity in just two years.

So it is possible. Is it going to continue? I don't think so, at least not at the same rate of increase. I think we saw an anomaly over the past two years where a lot of people moved in and there were supply chain shortages for builders and there was a pandemic and everybody wanted to buy a house and they had more money because they're saving more and the stimulus and all that stuff going on. So there's a lot of factors that go into it, but I think ultimately this insane growth can't continue on forever.

But I do think that prices will continue to slowly climb. I've already put out another video about how Utah is expected to see the highest sales growth and highest sales appreciation in the nation. Salt Lake City is on that list at number one so that'll be interesting to see if that actually plays out and I think it's going to continue to go up. I think it's realistic that you could be sitting on an $800,000 home that might be worth $900,000 in just 18-24 months from this point. 

If you're thinking about making that move here, my best advice would be that you might want to think about speeding up that timeline a little bit just because I don't think there's any relief coming to the prices anytime soon. So that's the end of the video. Thank you so much for watching. Reach out to me if we haven't had that conversation about your upcoming move.

I'd love to chat with you and don't forget to share this video with a friend or family member who might also be interested in it. 

Catch you in the next one

Cody