21 June 2008 - Home and condo sales along Utah's Wasatch Front were up for the fourth straight month in May, more good news for a state that has consistently outperformed the nation in the housing market arena.

In May, single-family home and condo sales along the Wasatch Front - including Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber counties - were up 4 percent compared to April, according to statistics from the Utah Association of Realtors.

In fact, home and condo sales have been increasing every month since the beginning of the year and were up a whopping 59 percent since January. Compared to last year during the same January-to-May period, sales only increased 41 percent.

Although we cannot know for certain how sales will perform in the next few months, the numbers seem to show that Wasatch Front home sales have stabilized after the credit crunch pushed transactions down sharply. Sales typically decrease about 13 percent from August to September, but after the credit problems last summer, sales were down by 33 percent - more than double the usual rate and a clear sign of the nation's financial problems.

Since that time, however, Wasatch Front home sales have seen a gradual increase, perhaps an indication that buyers are once again obtaining financing and using the vastly improved FHA program and the new jumbo conforming loans. Along the Wasatch Front, FHA use has gone up nearly 200 percent over the past year.

May's numbers also indicated that the upward trend in sales applied to both single-family residences as well as condos, with increases from April of 5 and 2 percent respectively. Since January, single-family home sales were up by 62 percent and condo sales saw an increase of 47 percent.

Of course, some of the rise may be a result of the traditional pick-up in home sales that occurs in the spring and early summer months. But the trend can't be completely attributed to the spring selling season. If we compare our statistics to those on a national level, we see that U.S. sales did not rebound in these months as we would expect them to.
Nationally, month-to-month home sales have been down every month since July. The only exception to the trend was in February when U.S. home sales saw an unexpected rise, according to the National Association of Realtors. The organization's May 2008 numbers have not yet been released.

Part of the reason for the Wasatch Front's consistent uptick in month-to-month sales, even while the U.S. has continued to see decrease after decrease, is because of Utah's strong economic fundamentals.

That's not to say Utah is immune from the housing challenges the U.S. faces - as our 33 percent drop in sales after the credit crunch indicates - but the state has weathered the economic storm well.

Our state's job creation rate is 1.4 percent, 14 times the national rate of 0.1 percent, and our unemployment rate of 3.2 percent is well below the national rate of 5.5 percent, according to the Utah Department of Workforce Services. Utah's foreclosure rate is also one of the lowest in the country. While the U.S. foreclosure rate is 2.47 percent, Utah's rate is only 1.02 percent.

Plus, Forbes magazine, a major business publication, recently placed Salt Lake on its list of "recession-proof" cities, an honor reserved for only 10 of the country's largest cities.

In terms of home-price increases, Utah has outperformed. Even while many areas of the country saw severe price declines in the first quarter, Utah was named the No. 2 state in home-price appreciation by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. The UAR's most-recent May figures also show home prices along the Wasatch Front have remained stable over both the past year and the past month.

To learn more about Utah and Wasatch Front real estate, visit UtahHousingFacts.com for news, statistics and analysis.