Economic Shifts

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People are becoming more and more concerned about their own economic situations given government policies and that fact is being supported by different MLS/REALTOR groups around the country. One survey from the mid-Atlantic region found that 75% of Realtors reported at least one buyer pausing their home search, with just under a third of those citing economic uncertainty, and nearly one-fifth blaming “general financial issues”.  I have 21 agents under my brokers license and they report weekly to me how the market is changing for both buyers and sellers.

That survey found that more than a third of agents are seeing sellers pulling their listings. Here in Utah, we’re seeing the same thing, after homes and condos sit on the market for months and months sellers tell us they just don’t want to keep dropping prices until they get an offer and would rather wait to sell until the economy improves.

The Fed lowered the federal funds rate last week, which is the target rate banks charge each other for overnight loans of reserves. This was the first cut since December 2024 and the Fed stated to expect more cuts by the end of the year. The rate drop was for a concern over a weaker national job market with slowing hiring. Mortgage rates should come down a tad, but not so much to create a rush of buyers and refinances. So many homeowners are sitting on mortgages with rates of @3% that they don’t want to refinance or sell. Basically, the current real estate market is not pro-seller or pro-buyer but instead is favoring nobody.

Both the survey and local agents are seeing tough decisions with their clients and customers and if the economy worsens sales will slump and interest rates won’t help. New home sales have already fallen from post-pandemic highs yet home prices here in the state were up 5.1% in August over last year at the same time, whereas the number of homes sold rose only .5% during the same time.  Zillow reported at the beginning of this month that 52% of home sales in Utah were under list price. Home sales are sluggish around the country but the place with the fastest selling homes is Milwaukee according to Realtor.com. The median listing price for a home there in August was $399,900. The cities ranked behind Milwaukee for having the fastest-selling homes are Buffalo, New York; Chicago; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Cincinnati, all at 39 days; and Detroit; Hartford, Connecticut; and Providence, Rhode Island, at 38 days.

And if you’re not buying and thinking about renting a recent report from Deseret News from Rent Café found that the minimum hourly wage needed to afford the average two-bedroom apartment in Utah is $31.27 as of September 2025 based on the average cost of a two-bedroom apartment here. As a comparison, it’s $52 in Boston $51 in California, and $21 in Oklahoma.

Choo Choo!

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Many of us Boomers grew up with a toy train set at home. I had to laugh when I recently sold a home for a couple hilarious senior citizens and discovered the entire basement housed a miniature train set and scenery that he built over the years with fake mountains, a town with a gas station, bank, etc. He found a guy in Denver who came over and bought/trucked the entire thing back to his home before we sold the house.

Utah is famous for a big part of train history in the U.S. In 1869 the rails from the West Coast were connected to the rails of the East Coast at Promontory Summit in what was then called Utah Territory. On May 10th of that year a 17.6-karat golden spike was driven in as the last piece of completion that changed transportation history forever here.

Now a new luxury scenic train called the Canyon Spirit is going to be expanding its route next April to offer a three-day, daytime journey between Denver and Salt Lake City with an overnight stay in Moab and Glenwood Springs, Colorado. This new route will feature a train with custom-designed glass domed coaches so you can see the fabulous Utah and Colorado vistas and offer gourmet dining options and alcoholic drinks while you ride. It’s a ‘daylight’ service that stops each night at a hotel destination rather than have sleeper cars.  The train will slow down for a particularly scenic locations for photos. Basically, this is a unique way to see the sights, but not a fast way to travel and tourists will love it. They will allow a small number of children on the train each season, but they must be old enough to sit in their own seat as the coaches are not equipped for car seats or lap-held infants. Service animals are allowed but must be applied for to ride 60 days in advance of traveling.

This new Canyon Spirit is a morph of what was known as the Rocky Mountaineer that offered a similar route and means of travel in 2021 and will have their last ‘Rockies to the Red Rocks’ tour this week before the new service takes over next spring. But the Rocky Mountaineer has scenic train offerings in Vancouver Jasper, Kamloops, Lake Louise and Banff as well as Vancouver, Whistler and Quesnel.

This scenic tour isn’t cheap-somewhere between $2,100-$2,500 per person. Don’t panic though, as you can also take Amtrak’s California Zephyr that travels between Salt Lake City and Denver. That journey takes 15 hours and costs between $55-$190 for a one way coach seat. The further in advance you book, the cheaper the ticket. The train leaves Salt Lake City once a day and doesn’t take the same scenic route as the Canyon Spirit or have the glass domed cars but still offers scenic vistas of the West.  It originates in either Chicago or San Francisco.

The Millenial’s

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The demographic for City Weekly readers is Millennials. Interesting stuff coming from rentcafe.com about the typical Millennial. Using a fictional male named ‘Matt’ who’s 35 years old, he graduated from college with a master’s degree in business, is tech-savvy and is optimistic about the future of AI and tech. He owns his home where he lives with his partner and their dog and is a caregiver for his parents. He spends time on YouTube watching videos and learning; loves to shop online from brands he knows and is generally optimistic about the future. Nationally 52.4% of the total Millennial population owns their home but locally that may not be the case.  And, about 43% of the group still has student loans, more than any other generation, with an average of $42,600 per person.

Salt Lake City has a strong Millennial population with about 25.4% of the metro population, and 40% of the city’s total population is between 20 and 39 years old. This is because we still have a growing economy, especially in the tech industry, which heavily recruits the age group.  Another recent study by commercialcafe.com reported that the median yearly income for Millennial households was approximately $115,000, which is much higher than other large cities along the Wasatch Front. Yet the reality is that the high cost of housing here is keeping more Millennials away from home ownership, marrying and having children.

The average cost of a home in the capitol city was somewhere between $559,700 to $572,000 depending on the source this July. If you make $115,000 and have 5% down, you probably can’t afford a home price of more than $345,000 at current mortgage rates.  Given that statistic, a Millennial could possibly by a condo in the City but not a home without a huge down payment or going in with a partner to buy the average priced property. Hint: use ‘The Rule of Three’ to figure out what you could afford by dividing your gross income by three, then divide that number by 12 (months). That gives you an idea as to how much of a monthly payment you may be able to afford. In this case it would be about $3,200 a month. For those who don’t own, the average rent in the city according to rentcafe.com is now $1,596.

How do you save for a downpayment? 1) set a goal for how much money to save; 2) tighten your budget; 3) save any raises or windfalls; 4) take a second job; 5) work with a local lender to make a plan and see if there’s any local first-time buyer assistance programs. And it’s a fact that everybody loves house porn-looking on the web at homes. Suggestion? Use utahrealestate.com and nothing else. Why? Because that is the website where all properties for sale by a REALTOR are loaded-it’s where the data starts. Other websites grab the data and manipulate it with their algorithms, which often are wrong when doing calculations of payments and home values.

 

HOA’s Updating

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I lived in a condo downtown for 20 years. I loved the ‘lock and leave’ lifestyle-I could go out of town and not worry about watering a lawn, snow removal. The building didn’t have amenities like a swimming pool, gym or movie room and the HOA fees were very reasonable. When you opt to live in a condo there will always be a monthly fee that the homeowners decide upon each year that are then usually implemented by an HOA manager. The fee will include insurance on the building (but not your personal items), a contribution to a ‘reserve’ account that could later pay for building repairs, water and sewer bills, and some buildings will include basic cable fees each month. Older buildings may have a central HVAC system and the cost to run that could also be included. Condo projects with tons of amenities will have much higher monthly fees because it costs a lot to insure a swimming pool/hot tub, tennis or pickleball courts, club rooms, etc.

That building that I lived in recently had a major plumbing issue on the floor below me that did a ton of damage in the building. Once the trouble was discovered and repair bids were had, every owner of a unit in the building was assessed a portion of the total repairs. Friends that live in one of the smaller units (about the size of large hotel room) has a $25,000 assessment fee which can be paid now or financed with payments. Larger units could face three to five times that assessment, and it can’t be passed on to a future owner/buyer. In places like Florida, which is being devastated by foreclosures of condos by Canadians not wanting to visit the U.S. anymore and by owners facing insane condo fees riddled by insurance fees that have gone up by the tens of thousands on buildings in hurricane areas.

In Utah, our legislature recognized that not everyone is happy with their HOA, and in this past session, House Bill 217 was introduced and passed, then became law in May. The bill, titled the “Home Association Amendments”, created the Office of the Homeowner’s Association Ombudsman and established new regulations for HOAs in the state which included a limit on monthly fees, requirements for board member training and a new complaint process. In addition. There are new rules as to how HOA’s can spend reinvestment fees, and controls the transfer fee which is charged by most HOA’s now when a new owner buys in a condo building. Also, the bill authorized the Department of Commerce to set and require annual registration for HOA’s, and requires them to keep 3 years of minutes. The person who will become the ombudsman has not been appointed yet, but this is a great step for condo owners and their rights and gives a source to hear complaints outside of the buildings’ HOA board.

 

Hey Powderheads!

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As the fall colors start to turn, many powderheads start pacing back and forth, looking longingly at the top of our Rocky Mountains for that first dusting of Utah snow. The Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts near to below-average snowfall for Utah during the 2025-2026 winter season, with warmer-than-normal temperatures overall. La Nina may influence our snowpack as it brings wet and cold to some areas and often, drier winters in Utah. This could mean a slow start for skiers, but Brian Head is hoping to open its slopes as early as November 7th, with Solitude planning for Nov. 14th, Park City Mountain and Alta hoping for Nov. 21st in time for Thanksgiving crowds.

We have 15 ski resorts in the state but this winter an oldie but goodie will reopen, making it a sweet sixteen for our state. Originally operating from 1967-1980, the Snowland Ski and Sledding area in Fairview Canyon is being revived as a small but cozy family-friendly ski area in Sanpete County. What’s unique about this news is the resort is backed by the nonprofit Snowland Foundation and supported by the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation to bring safe, accessible skiing back to Central Utah.

I know Fairview Canyon well, as I graduated from Wasatch Academy in Mt. Pleasant, just a few miles south. I had never skied before in my life and through a school program I had wooden skis and tied ski boots slapped on me and told to “Grab onto the rope tow and go up the hill!”. And once I got to the top of the bunny hill I was instructed to “Spread your legs as far apart as you can!”. And that was all the instruction I got, and I was a complete failure at it. A few years later at Westminster College (now University) I learned better skills through a college course at Brighton and had a ton of fun until my childhood handicap came back and couldn’t ski anymore. Funny, but our Governor Cox grew up in Fairview, and he not only skied at Snowland but taught his kids to ski there as well. Snow College will be partnering with the resort to offer lessons to students this year. No chairlifts are planned now or in the future.

The rope tow lifts (two of them) will serve the reopened trails this first season and the good news is that lift tickets are going to be around $20 for day passes and $100 for a season pass. Snowland is backed by $1 million in state recreation grants and $200,000+ in donations, with ongoing fundraising for future development into facilities and improvements. This keeps the focus on local benefit and long-term sustainability in the community. And if you’re familiar with the area, the cabin constructed by Jerry Nelson who created the little ski area is being revamped to serve as a small ski hub offering refreshments, concessions, and a restroom. And hey, if you don’t ski, there’s plenty of sledding options, too.