I’ve been selling real estate since before there were mobile phones or the internet and when homes around Liberty Park used to sell for $29,900. I sold a friend a home in the Bountiful hills back then-a big one with @3500 sq. ft. for $79,000.  She and her husband thought they were paying way too much but loved the view. Jump forward a few years and the LDS Church announced they were going to build the Bountiful Temple. Soon, million dollar homes were being built all around them and my friends were very very happy with their now high neighborhood value.

This month the same saints announced a Temple would be built in Tooele, Utah (known as ‘the last McDonalds stop before Wendover’).  As Tooele is less than a 30 minute drive from the Capitol City it’s been seeing a building boom of residential homes-homes that are much less expensive than new construction projects in the Salt Lake Valley. NOW their real estate market will improve even more-especially near the new Temple site and folks will move further west to Grantsville where new homes sell in the low $200’s and the average price for a home in the Salt Lake Valley is $361,000.

I love Grantsville!  I just took a listing out there and got to revisit the sleepy little town where I used to hunt for ghost towns, old dumps and treasures during college.  It’s just 12 minutes past Tooele on Highway 138 or off its own exit on I-80. They’ve got a newer city hall and great library in the tiny downtown area, a grocery store and plenty of homes dedicated to hair salons. South Fork Hardware has baby chicks on sale right now and ya gotta love when you buy hay at that store that the owner grew it himself. I asked a woman in the checkout line there why she lived there and she smiled and said ‘I got tired of big town Phoenix and the traffic. I have horses and this place is great and close to Salt Lake!’ Many folks live in Grantsville because it IS rural and because it’s not much farther than downtown to Herriman on a bad traffic day. It’s 33 miles to the Salt Lake Airport and even closer to the new prison and Inland Port sites. You bet as those projects get built both little cities will see massive influx of renters and home buyers. If you take the I-80 exit you’ll drive a two lane road past beefalo (‘steaks for sale’) ranches, cows, horses and dog kennels. It’s picturesque : a 1920’s rusty school bus parked in a field with a few black angus cows leaning against it for shade; sheep who are chewing away at grass while all the new lambs jump around in the spring sun; and mountains on both sides of the valley with the smell of cattle and hay in the air.

If you head from Tooele you’ll go past the historic 150 year old Benson Grist Mill,  past the Utah Motorsports Campus and the turnoff to the Utah FIRE Museum at the Deseret Peak Complex.  That place has groovy old firetrucks preserved and inside from the elements that young and old kids love. Take a trek some Saturday and see what’s west in the next valley. Now that a Temple is coming the rural charm of the area will slowly be going away.