Utah’s average home price is around $550,000, making it the eighth most expensive state in terms of median home prices in the country.
“Utah has been identified as the state reporting the 15th-largest percentage decrease between 2014 and 2024 in homeownership, dropping by 0.28%,” according to a study by New Jersey Real Estate Network, emailed to the Deseret News. Homeownership was at its highest in the state in 2020, with a rate of 74.4%.
Some areas of Utah offer abundant opportunities while boasting a reasonable housing market price under the state average, according to Redfin.
Most affordable housing markets in Utah:
- Ogden — median home price: $375,000.
- Logan — median home price: $395,000.
- Provo — median home price: $450,000.
- Saratoga Springs — median home price: $464,990.
- Taylorsville — median home price: $465,000.
While more affordable compared to other Utah cities, on a national scale, Ogden’s average home price is still $140,000 more than the average home price in Mississippi, which Bankrate reports as having the most affordable housing market in the country.
National housing market trends
Home sales in August dipped 4.2% from a year ago, but growing inventory is anticipated to ease the market.
“Home sales were disappointing again in August, but the recent development of lower mortgage rates coupled with increasing inventory is a powerful combination that will provide the environment for sales to move higher in future months,” National Association of Realtors’ chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a report on existing home sales. “The home-buying process, from the initial search to getting the house keys, typically takes several months.”
Mortgage rates have dropped over the past couple of months. According to FreddieMac, the current 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is 6.08%, down 1.23% from a year ago.
Registered housing inventory last month was 1.35 million units. A year ago, it was 1.1 million, the NAR report said. There were 716,000 seasonally adjusted annualized new single-family home sales across the country in August, per Zillow, representing a 4.7% decrease from the July amount of 751,000 but is 9.8% higher than the estimate for August 2023.
“The rise in inventory — and, more technically, the accompanying months’ supply — implies home buyers are in a much-improved position to find the right home and at more favorable prices,” Yun added.
