There’s nowhere in Utah where the typical renter can afford to buy a home without moving across county lines.
And the hopes of renters buying a home in 2025 might not be getting better.
A Salt Lake Tribune analysis of data from the Utah Association of Realtors and the U.S. Census Bureau found renters making the median, or typical, household income can’t buy a home without spending less than 28% of their income in any of Utah’s 29 counties without moving to a different county.
That’s a setback from May when a similar analysis found renters in Beaver County could buy a home without moving counties.
Home prices are down from their peak in February 2022, but the median sales price is still close to $500,000 or higher, according to the Utah Association of Realtors and the Federal Reserve. High interest rates compound the problem.
The median sales price for more than 31,000 existing homes sold this year across Utah’s 29 counties was $500,000 as of September, a slight increase from earlier this year when median home sales were at $490,000 as of March.
The median — calculated by using the middle number to avoid skewing because of unusually small or large numbers — sales price ranged from $290,000 in Beaver County to $1.4 million in Summit County.
The Tribune used a formula from real-estate firm CBRE that assumed a 30-year fixed mortgage with a 10% down payment and a 6.43% interest rate. Using that formula, the typical mortgage payment in Utah for people who bought their home this year is $3,105 and varies from $1,478 in Carbon County $8,414 in Summit County.
A higher down payment would mean a lower loan. Those payments also don’t include property taxes or home insurance costs.
Altogether, that means Utahns need to make about $133,100 a year to afford a mortgage, though that amount varies by county, from $63,39 to $360,609.
The median income for a renter household in every Utah county is lower than the salary needed to buy a home without spending more than 28% of income on mortgage payments, with renter households falling short an average of nearly $73,000 and as much as $276,000.
Renters in Wasatch and Summit counties, where median renter incomes are highest, can afford to buy in some parts of the state. The typical Wasatch County renters could buy in Carbon County, and Summit County renters could tack Beaver, Daggett, Emery and Millard counties onto their list of possibilities.
Utah’s housing inventory is one of the worst in the nation. The Beehive State has the seventh-highest median listing price as of Oct. 1, 2024, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Housing construction in Salt Lake City on Friday, Nov. 15, 2024.
But moving out of state wouldn’t necessarily help Utah renters, as the lowest needed income in any state to afford the median listing price in the current market is $65,202 in West Virginia. Using the same formula, that’s about $3,800 more than the typical Utah renter’s income, according to American Community Survey data released in September.
Only renters in Beaver, Morgan, Summit and Wasatch counties make more than $65,202.
Summit County renters make the most in the state at $84,193 and could afford to buy in 13 states, mostly in the Midwest and the Southeast.
And some market outlooks don’t predict much relief.
While CoreLogic, a firm providing global real estate insights, predicts a “very high” probability that home prices will dip in the Provo-Orem and Salt Lake City metropolitan areas, a researcher at The University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute disagrees.
Dejan Eskic, a senior research fellow at the Gardner Institute who studies housing, construction and real estate, concurs that homes in Utah are overvalued but doesn’t see them dropping without a recession connected to job loss.
He predicts home values will either stay the same or go up about 3% in 2025. He also points to a Utah Economic Council report that forecasts a 3.6% increase. That matches national predictions from mortgage financing company Fannie Mae.
“There is always a probability of our prices going down, but with our net migration staying steady, and our housing production not keeping up, prices remain,” Eskic wrote in an email.
Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.