Salt Lake City Real Estate Tips, Market Updates and

Local Happenings

By Real Estate Expert KathyOHomes

Here is another example that the greater Salt Lake City Utah area remains to be somewhat insulated from the woes of other states across the country.As I have stated before our unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the country and our growth rate is still rising.

The Salt Lake Board of REALTORS® said today that existing home and condominium sales in Salt Lake County in February climbed 32 percent over January sales. Although, sales were down 23 percent compared to February 2008 this recent upswing is very promising.

In February there were 584 homes and condos sold, up 32 percent from 444 sales in January. The increase in sales can be partly attributed to an aggressive incentive campaign by the federal government that offers an $8,000 tax credit to first-time home buyers or buyers who have not owned a home in the past three years.

"Sales will continue to increase going forward because of record-low mortgage interest rates and a second program that offers a $6,000 state grant for buyers of new homes," according to Ryan Kirkham, president of the Salt Lake Board of REALTORS®. "With these incentives and mortgage interest rates below 5 percent, buyers have a tremendous opportunity."

The Federal Reserve's move earlier this month to buy as much as $300 billion in long-term U.S. Treasury securities pushed down mortgage interest rates - which are benchmarked to Treasury bonds - to below 5 percent. Interest
rates could fall as low as 4.5 percent, according to Kelly Matthews, economist at Wells Fargo.

The median price of homes and condos sold in February was $224,450, down 3 percent from $231,500 in January, but flat compared to a median price of $224,956 in February 2008. The median sales price of all homes and condos sold in Salt Lake County peaked in June 2007 at $243,500. When compared to February 2009, the median sales price has fallen 8 percent.

The median cumulative days on the market to sell a home was 120 days in February, up from 99 days in January and up from 96 days in February 2008. Based on current sales trends over the past three months, the absorption
rate (an indication of how long it would take to sell existing inventory) is 11.9 months.

There is a lot of free information available to you about buying, selling or investing in Salt Lake City Utah real estate. For complete information about the Salt Lake City Utah real estate market including current homes for sale, property values and more please visit the most complete website online dedicated to everything Salt Lake City Utah real estate. So please feel free to contact me with any of your mortgage questions and I will me more than glad to answer your queries. Call me on my cell at 801-518-4599 or email me at kathyo@kathyohomes.com.

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