Report: Home sales increase, prices fall

SALT LAKE CITY — Trying to purchase a house in Utah's current economic climate has gotten a little easier if you're a buyer, but many sellers are finding the market less then favorable.

Bill DeLong and his wife bought a house in Sandy in 2008 as an investment property for about $225,000. After $60,000 in renovations, they leased it to renters for a year before putting it on the market in September of last year.

After three months on the market, DeLong said, they decided to sell the property at a loss for about $242,000. He blamed the glut of distressed properties and excess existing inventory for their inability to recoup their initial investment.

"There's just so many short sales and foreclosures to compete with," DeLong told the Deseret News. "If somebody wants to sell their house for more (than a bare value), you just can't do it until those things are gone.

"So we just cut our losses and moved along."

It was those falling home prices along the Wasatch Front that prompted a number of people to take the plunge into homeownership during the last three months of 2009. According to figures released Wednesday by the Salt Lake Board of Realtors. More than 2,400 single-family homes were sold in Salt Lake County during the fourth quarter, a 36 percent hike compared with the same quarter in 2008. Home sales also showed a 19 percent gain in the month of December, compared with the same month a year before, the report stated.

"Nearly every ZIP code in Salt Lake County saw double-digit increases in home sales," Bill Heiner, president of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors, said in a release. "Existing home sales are surging because of more affordable home prices and the federal government's home buyer tax credit."

Home sales this year could reach as high as 10,000 units sold in Salt Lake County, according to a 2010 Housing Forecast commissioned by the Salt Lake Board of Realtors.

While the number of homes sold surged, the price buyers paid for them declined.

The median home sales price fell in all five counties included in the report — Salt Lake, Davis, Tooele, Utah and Weber — compared to the previous year. Salt Lake County saw prices drop 7.63 percent from the 2008 fourth quarter, but the number of homes sold jumped more than 36 percent.