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Utah: Home-sales numbers show bubble bursting

The DN reported yesterday that home prices were up 3% along the Wasatch Front... Which is it? Up or Down?

MLS listings at this hour are OVER 24,000 listings, which I believe is AN ALL-TIME RECORD!!

With inventory continuing to surge, this game has several innings to play.

The paper is just not going to print the crazy stories I have been hearing from people. There are so many "real estate investors" that are in way over their heads.

Many are hanging on by their fingernails. There are so many empty lots that are NOT going to sell anywhere close to what they are asking. Long way to go before this bottoms. Thing is, there's no hurry. When it does "bottom" it will bounce around there for several years. The easy money that fueled the last bubble is OVER.

But my realtor told me they aren't making any more land and all these people and jobs were coming to Utah! How can this be???

Ok, here we have an opportunity to pit both papers against each other. And my friends in this case you need to pop open the Tribune and read their article on the same housing numbers. You get a much better understanding of the situation by a reporter who obviously can sift thru the numbers to find the true story.

Sorry Jason Lee you were clearly beaten on the playing field today.

There is a critical number he missed altogether. That is $300,000 a threshold in the housing prices that marks affordability. 70% of all sales are at or under that threshold and prices are not declining at all in that level. Virtually all of the price declines and those big percentage drops in both value sand sales come from homes that are 400,000 and above and that holds true in all 5 counties along the Wasatch front.

Read the Trib article, this one was poorly investigated and poorly written. Great job Dnews!

if you can't discern if the housing market is generally up or generally down, you are in trouble.

The newspapers are responsible for generating readers and therefore are incented to write anything that will get people's attention.

Don't make it sound like such a "dooms-Day". Last year we had over 90,000 homes on the MLS. 24,000 is right where it should be. Salt Lake County has 8,723. That is down from just a few months ago when it was over 11,000 but it is right-on with the averages from the past five years of about 8,500. The average price of homes actually increased after the drop. Everyone knows that most homes list in the second quarter of each year and sell for their highest prices in the third quarter of each year. With this, it makes sense that we will see prices drop in the next quarter. That is right in-line with the averages. The best time to buy in any year is the 4th and 1st quarter of any given year. That's when prices are the lowest. Therefore, it becomes easy to predict that prices will start to recover in about March/April of next year based on history.

All of the other markets that crashed continued along for about a year or two with low sales without prices crashing, but then the prices fell 20% to 30% in about six months to a year. Utah is no different, and we will be entering foreclosure city in the next year sometime.

Real estate prices are "sticky" going down, but when prices are unsustainable, they will eventually fall, and fall hard. This will also cause all the realtors, brokers, consruction workers, and others depending on a rising and robust real estate market to lose their jobs, which will hurt the market even more. Tough times ahead.

please look for the lee gardner salt lake county assessor article yesterday in this very same news paper ...

he thinks the housing market is up and therefore your property taxes are still staying UP it is his opinion that nothing has gone down

therefore, again .. it is the opinion of the county assessor that assesses your property with taxes

this state needs the prop13 of calif .. acquisition based property taxing .. to remove these whims of ideas for your property taxing from year to year in this state ...

who's right lee gardners opinion or the two papers facts about the real numbers related to property values really going down ... but apparently your taxes arent based on factual numbers but rather county assessors opinions on how the market place is doing

again .. acquisition based property taxing is the only way to go these days in this state

the next property taxing committee mtg will be august 20th on capital hill .. i suggest this state start getting interested in this issue .. several on the committee are directors of groups to see fair market value remains - therefore your property tax is opinion

What an irresponsible headline!!! How many home owners will be hurt by such nonsense? Nothing in your article suggested a crash is imminent!

A bubble is hardly starting to "burst" at one or two percent. I am ready to face reality but it seems to me that if a bubble was bursting we would see something more in the range of ten percent. Just a suggestion on the caption of the article.

What political party has been in office these last 8 years? What party has typically run Utahs business forever? Who are you going to vote for this next 2 elections? Do you want to be labeled as sheep forever? Do you want to be the laughing stock of the nation forever? Are you going to vote for the same party that has dominated Utah forever again? Lastly, how do you like our economy at the present?

You just got love em .... It was all of that darn "reckless lending" that got us into this mess. Oh I see. I'm glad the president of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors cleared that up.

So, it has nothing to do with the reckless borrowing, reckless appraising, reckless development, and reckless pimping of the sale that realtors might do if they are trying to add an extra digit or two onto their monthly income.

There ain't no bubble bursting.
Economic times have been better than ever.
Stop your liberal whining and get back to work!
All is fine and dandy in Pleasantville.

There was another article about forclosed homes in Utah this week. Utah is number 10 in forclosures in the U.S. of A. The ARM resest interest rates are starting to take hold.

Now the downtown SLC is soon, 2010 - 2011 to have high rise condos jumping out into the sky. Rick Howa is pushing condos at 4th and 5th North and 3rd and 2nd West. Hurray! plenty of places to live.

When I walk the downtown streets I see most teenages wearing T shirs and Jeans. They will not have the monies to buy even those $300,000 craker box homes with one bath. Ug Ug Ug .

Salt Lake Citizens are in a dream world fueled buy the moneys they took out of their home equity last year. So. Be. It.

Prop 13 is the worst thing to hit California since Jerry Brown.

It has made it so old people can't move and young people can't afford the taxes.

The principle behind it was right but the way they did was wrong. They are just now starting to really feel the effects of it. The worst is yet to come...

Yes, I'm sure it was a Republican conspiracy that led to the current housing troubles. In fact, George W. actually called me two years ago and told me to start using other peoples' credit scores to build spec homes....Gov Huntsman did the "drive-by" appraisals. We thought it was a great idea...home prices always go up! Supply and demand economics don't apply to the housing market.

Dude...take off your tinfoil head-gear and get with the program.

Yes, the affordability problem has stopped the 300k + homes in their tracks, while homes in the low-mid 200's are still doing OK.

For now.

But what happens when those 300k+ homes start getting priced in the mid-200's? The cookie-cutter 3/2/2's in the 200's are going to be up against custom 4Bedroom homes with bigger lawns for the same price, and guess which ones are going to get the sale?

All that means is everything under 300k is going to have to fall eventually too, because the nicer inventory is going to migrate to that price point and drive the average crap down.

Misleading numbers, one sided responses and "Expert" pulp bites. I give this article a -D. Not even worthy of a high school paper.

and anonymous .. how is that any different then here in utah where old people are taxed out of their house and young people declare bankrupcy cause they cant afford the house and the higher taxes each year ??

obviously you werent in calif at the time of prop13 like i was and got to stay in my house cause the $2,800 tax bill went back to $550 for the 1% of the $55,000 i paid for my house ...

as for not working .. again anonymous you are out of touch ... the prop13 property taxed based system collects 30% more money then the 'old' system .. the 30 billion on education in the state of calif is met easily ... the school boards are spending wrong ...

a million dollar house near me in mapleton is only assessed at $500,000 ... why ?? under the prop13 it would be a million house and pay $10,000 in taxes ... currently they dont even pay $3,000 in taxes ...

old people dont move cause they can afford where they live (until they get taxed out of their home)

sorry anonymous .. your facts are clueless