2014

Condominium owners in Utah and Salt Lake County saw increasing values in 2013, just as single family homeowners enjoyed last year. I think the condo market is back to damn healthy levels and we’ve now leaped over that ugly abyss of the crash. For some reason condos here were not initially affected by the tumbling economy in 2008 but they soon caught up with all the bad short sales and foreclosures losses along with single family properties. Most condo owners who didn’t lose their homes are seeing equity come back – enough to sell if they want to or need to now.

There were 1267 condos sold in 2012 in Salt Lake County at an average price of $153,000. In 2013, there were 1600 condo sales at an average $176,880. That is an average increase of 16% in values in one year and 26% more sales in just twelve months. Currently there are 506 condos for sale in the County at an average asking price of $263,725 and 106 units with sales pending at an average asking price of $178,840.

Right now the condos that have sales pending show a lower than average asking price probably because the data represents the final big shakeout of condominiums with owners under financial distress facing short sale or foreclosure from the crash. We won’t be seeing so many of those bargain hunter deals in this 2014 recovery unless random banks decide to release hidden inventories we don’t know about. In the downtown area I watch there were 175 condos that changed hands in 2013 and 136 in 2012, a rise of 28% in sales. Prices jumped up almost 19% from an average sale of $205,200 to $243,000 in one year.

The Metro condominiums at 350 South 200 East were one of the last, large, high rise projects built before the economy tanked. In 2012 and 2013 the number of sales there were 9 and 8 respectively but prices jumped in that one year from an average sales price of $260,000 to $299,000. The Parc at Gateway which saw a large number of Asian investors buy-in during the Olympics when they were put on the market had only three sales in 2012 at an average sales price of $206,000 but 11 sales in 2013 with boost in closing prices to $248,000. The Dakota Lofts, one of the first modern urban conversions in the city had no sales in 2012 but four in 2013. The huge American Towers condominium project that opened in the 1980’s during that’s decade’s economic crash saw 6 sales in 2012 at an average of $285,000 and then 18 sales last year with a bump in the average sales price to $306,000.

Around the state, St. George condominiums increased the most in value in the last year, albeit sales volume wasn’t that much higher. According to WFRMLS web data 34 units were sold in 2013, 5 over the year before. St. George was hit hard by the recession as so many of its condo inventory there is second home business. When a family is in financial trouble, a second home is the first to go into foreclosure. Prices jumped from and average sale in of $101,000 in 2012 to $150,000 in 2013. That’s proving to me we’ve bottomed out in real estate values here in Utah.

The highest reported sales prices of condominiums in Utah in 2013 were: $1,249,000 at the Village at Sugarplum at Alta; $1,250,000 at the Chateaux on the Green (at the north of Bonneville Golf Course) and $2,650,000 at Silver Star in Park City. All three luxury condos sold for more than offering price.