There’s good news for affordable housing coming to Salt Lake City!

First, if you haven’t driven on Foothill across from Research Park and Sunnyside (800 So) you’d miss all the construction going on at the west side of the road. It’s hard to miss since just about everywhere in the valley is a crane, bulldozer or hole being developed. This site is where a private entity (The Clark and Christine Ivory Trust), the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the state/U of U are combining resources to put in four buildings with @550 apartments, and was formerly the original location of ‘married student housing’ for the school. The church is offering a ground lease for 99 years on the location for the two entities to develop and manage housing there. Second, the university and ‘Ivory University House’ is in the process of adding @1,700 housing units for students: 430 rooms at Kahlert Village, 775 beds in the Impact and Prosperity Epicenter and 504 units in the University West Village. All of the construction should be completed by 2024.

Third, and highly controversial, is Salt Lake City’s proposals for Affordable Housing Incentives. The Planning Division has done an extreme deep dive into researching housing issues that we’re facing in the capitol city and have put forth zoning amendments to encourage the construction of additional affordable housing buy incentivizing developers who include affordable homes in their projects. This wouldn’t be a requirement but if the developer did include affordable housing, then they might be able to get waivers on parking, height, setback and process waivers depending on the designs.

What’s controversial about affordable housing? The City is proposing to allow for multi-family units in single family neighborhoods. Picture the Harvard/Yale area around 1000 South and 1500 East, an area of precious mostly brick homes with historic architecture and landscape. Then imagine one of those homes being torn town and replaced with a four-plex that may have one or two units that could be rented to low income folks-people who earn less than $74,000 for a family of four.  Nimbys HATE this idea of rental housing and have been testifying in hearings and writing emails like crazy trying to stop more generous zoning. They don’t want greater height, or multi-family buildings nearby, or a reduction in side yards that might help squeeze in bigger structures. You’ll hear more about this during the summer as public input is a necessary step in the process of approval. The City does want you to speak up!

Also, the City is still trying to create opportunities for more ADU’s (think mini-homes). Our laws are outdated here for this trend in affordable housing and again, NIMBY’s oppose greater density in their neighborhoods. Ivory Homes has been battling Avenues residents for years to build homes at a project they call ‘Capitol Park Cottages’ at @675 N. F Street. Planning and Zoning approved of a rezone for them last week to build 19 single-family homes with 14 of them having ADU’s.

 

Buyers take note!  The real estate market is changing drastically, especially seen in new data from the Salt Lake Board of REALTORS. Homes sales (condos, single family) fell to just 1,344 in June in Salt Lake County. That’s the lowest they’ve been in June for a decade and 27% less sales than last year during June.

What does that mean for buyers? For the last three quarters homes were selling in just six days, but now the average ‘days on market’ is 21 days, with an average list price of $613,397 and an average sales price of $611,740. There is now three times the normal inventory of properties for sale than pre-pandemic numbers and that simply means that buyers finally have a chance to shop and maybe even return the next day to a property that hasn’t sold with 20 offers on it.

I just helped some sellers go under contract on their home after a three day negotiation battle. In order to sell to the interested buyers the sellers paid $12,000 in the buyers closing/mortgage costs and agreed to pay the buyers rent for 30 days after close of escrow as they await their new home to be finished so they can move. I have not seen seller’s pay closing costs in at least two years because our market heated up so fast with so much competition from buyers that it wasn’t a really a possibility. Now with the slow down buyers might be able to pay asking price and not $100,000 over ask!  Buyers might be able to negotiate seller concessions, like seller paying for a home warranty on behalf of the buyers for a year (@$600) on mechanical items in the home, mortgage costs (can be up to 2% of the loan amount), repairs and personal items such as washers/dryers, pool tables, snow blowers.

One of the biggest reasons the market has slowed is due to the Federal Reserve raising its rates which trickles down to higher mortgage rates for buyers. Thirty year loan interest rates were just above 6% a few weeks ago but have now dropped below 6%. The Fed will be meeting in another week and economists suspect it will raise interest rates by one percent which makes it more expensive for banks to borrow and thus interest rates on all kinds of consumer and commercial borrowing, including mortgage rates tend to go up. This is all necessary to try and cool inflation.

Inflation rose to 9.1% last week, the most since February of 1991. You certainly can feel that as airline fares rose 34.1%, new car prices by 11.4%, and food prices are rising 1% per month. Housing prices are falling around the country by an average of 5% and over 50% of the listings on the MLS in Salt Lake City have had price reductions in the past few weeks. If you gave up trying to find a home, you may want to get back into shopping…deals are out there again!

The first peoples in Utah were the Fremont and the Anasazi and then later the Northern Shoshone, Goshute, Bannock, Paiute, and Ute peoples. Like the herds they followed for food, they migrated throughout the state during all types of weather. White explorers encountered these tribes throughout the 1700-1800’s. Fur trappers were the first whites to have discovered Utah Lake and in the mid-1800’s Mormons began using and settling around it’s east and west shores. Historians report that Brigham Young first sent a fishing party to the lake to see what species inhabited the water and then in 1850 established a permanent settlement near its shores named ‘Fort Utah’ (in honor of the Utes living there), then later ‘Fort Provo’ (after the well-known French-Canadian trapper, Etienne Proveau who first saw the lake in 1825).

Utah Lake is a freshwater lake on the west side of I-15 in Utah County, about thirty miles long and seven-ten miles wide. Over the years it has been known as Ashley Lake, Little Uta Lake, Utaw (correct spelling) Lake, and Laguna de Nuestra Senora de la Merced de Timpanogotiz. The most important use of the lake has always been to water crops and provide irrigation, and in the 1800’s water users wanted to make sure there was enough water in the lake for late season crop irrigation. In 1884-1885 Mormons got together and effectively set the level of the lake to control water use. Fast forward sixty some odd years and Utah Valley saw the creation of a $200 million steel plant financed by the federal government to make sure that there would be enough steel to meet the military needs for supply. The plant opened in 1944, three years after the Japanese attached Hawaii. The plant operated for two years as a government facility and then was sold to U.S Steel for $47.5 million. It closed in 2001, the blast furnaces used to melt the product were demolished in 2005 and then in 2017 the master-planned community of ‘Vineyard’ was announced. In 2020 the new city was the fastest growing place in America, which had a growth rate of 10,687%.

Now developers have produced a grand plan to built islands in the lake for a mixed use of housing and businesses. The legislature is looking at a myriad of bills about water use and Utah Lake, including one to create an agency to oversee the management of Utah Lake. While elected officials try to figure out how to save on water use during this decade’s long drought and to get more water to the endangered Great Salt Lake, developers (“Lake Restoration Solutions”) want to dredge the bottom of the lake so they can build thirty-four islands. They would get out sludge made up of decades of sewer and industrial waste at the bottom which could turn the notorious white, murky waters of Utah Lake into something cleaner. Readings throughout the summer of water quality there are often bad enough to close beaches. The Utah Legislature ends March 4^th.

Decades ago, in New York City there was a forgotten 10 acres of public space called Bryant Park at 1071 Avenue of the Americas between West 40^th and West 41^st Streets. By the 1980’s it had become our version of what our Pioneer Park looked like-a campground for the unsheltered, a place to buy and use drugs. Locals avoided it as much as possible even though it had some rich history in a great location in Manhattan. It was a site for military drills during the American Revolution and in the early 1800’s it became a public cemetery to bury unknown or indigent people. It was designated a public park in 1871 but according to the book ‘The Power Broker’ it became neglected and “a haven for drunks and idlers”.

On this side of the Mississippi River, Pioneer Park in downtown Salt Lake City was originally Pioneer Fort, what the Daughters of Utah Pioneers called “What Plymouth is to New England, the Old Fort is to the Great West”. It was the landing place of Mormons who arrived in 1847 and within a week they began building a fort with log cabins and adobe walls. After 1890 it was used as ap playground and in 1898 it was dedicated as Pioneer Park and ever since then locals have struggled as to what the use should be for the land. In the 1940’s some wanted to turn it into a larger area for a golf course then in the 1950’s plans were made to re-create the first school house and original cabins there. In the 1990’s The Deseret News reported that it’s location near the bus station, Rescue Mission, Salvation Army and shelters made the place a natural congregation for transients.

Since the main downtown shelter has been bulldozed, less transients are seen at the park. They have been ‘pushed’ to other places in the city by police and the Health Department. Having lived for 20 years a block away from the park, I sat on many committees as to what to do with the greenspace to make it more inviting. Now the City is once again hearing ideas that would make it more like what Bryant Park has become today-a fabulous mid-town gathering place for concerts and a sponsored Winter market that runs from October through March each year with almost 200 vendors. Salt Lake City staff and a group called ‘Design Workshop’ have requested $20mil to add pickleball courts, a café, water misting feature, bus stops, a basketball court, all age playground and fitness circuit and enhanced dog park. Bryant Park gathered massive financial support for the businesses surrounding it whereas Pioneer Park has support but not even 1/10^th of funds from businesses to date and relies on the City to fund the changes. Everyone wants a better park if the City has the money, but lets not forget there are several other green spaces that need attention in this town with minority input.

OMG. Have you filled up your gas tank this past week? As someone who virtually ‘drives for a living’ I’m not a happy consumer at the pump. What’s causing these hellish gas prices? Primarily, GREED.  We have enough gas for the vehicles in this country in reserves, but suppliers cut way back during COVID because simply, we weren’t going anywhere. Now, EVERYONE wants to travel, and demand is not keeping up with supply. When that happens, producers can gouge us. Do NOT think Russia is responsible for the shortages. It’s our own oil drillers, and refineries that are really the root cause of our shortages right now.

There’re some great tips from www.energy.gov on how to save on gas, which will also help reduce pollution and improve energy security. Here they are:

-minimize idling your car. In NYC you can be fined $400 for idling your truck for more than 3 minutes and there’s a huge industry of people who video the truck, send in the relevant info and get @$90 for reporting the offenders. We need that here!

-avoid aggressive driving for many reasons. Speeding, rapid acceleration and hard braking can lower your highway gas mileage by 15-30% and city mileage by 10-40%.

-avoid driving at high speeds. ABOVE 50, mph gas mileage drops rapidly for every 5 mph, which equals about $.30 per gallon of gasoline.

-those fancy roof racks cause drag, decreasing fuel economy. Try and put your stuff IN the car.

-try and work from home more. Use public transit, carpool, etc.  Check out www.rideutah.com

-use the right grade of motor oil for your car. Using a different grade can lower you mileage by 1-2%

-make sure your tires are inflated to the right pressure. If you can’t read your tire it might be on a sticker on the driver’s side door jam.

The bottom line for best gas mileage is to drive more efficiently, keep your car in shape, buy a more efficient vehicle if you can afford it.  We’ll be moving into warmer weather and known that running your car’s air conditioning is the main contributor to reduced fuel economy during the dog days (hot) summer-even more so on hybrids, plug-in hybrids and electric (EV) vehicles.  The down side is to think opening all the car windows instead of using AC might help but that just causes wind resistance and lowers fuel economy. It will work however, if you lower your windows driving at city speeds and not on the freeway.

Gas prices in Utah are somewhere between $4.25-$4.50 right now. For the first time in 70 years the U.S. is able to produce as much crude oil and gas as we consume, but a lack of pipelines and refineries is hindering gas prices to come down anytime soon. As summer approaches people will be hitting the road or flying to vacation destinations. You might want to book your flight for that end of summer of early fall trip now rather than later because airline tickets are going up just as fast due to airline fuel supply chain problems.