Housing prices in SLC

This is mostly an email in disguise to my dear wife, but I thought these stats were interesting enough to publish them for broader (i.e., three people instead of one) consumption.

In the last three years, the median home in SLC has fallen from a peak of $400K to $292K, a 27% decline. The 25th percentile home has fallen from a peak of $270K to $199K, a 26% decline. The 75th percentile home has fallen from a peak of $$697K to $491K. While this is a similar decline (30%), over $200K of lost equity is a pretty staggering number.

One notable difference is that the median and below homes had a real run-up during those three years. The 25th percentile home price three years ago was almost exactly the same as it is now, it just ran up and fell back down in the meantime. The median home has lost 20% of its value from three years ago, so the fall is not just from short-term hysteria. In the case of the 75th percentile, prices only ran up 6% and then fell down 30%, so it's long term value that was lost.

Here's what that looks like graphically. Notice that the most expensive houses peaked a long time ago and just continue to tumble.

Here's what the inventory has done in the meantime (a 3x increase).

I'm no fundamentalist (speaking financially, though also religiously for that matter), but the inventory chart looks like a shoulder to me. Inventory looks like it has hopefully topped out and will start falling. I'm sure that's a leading indicator and will not stem price declines until much of the inventory is absorbed. Nevertheless, it is a good sign that things are hopefully turning positive.

The good news for those out there looking for houses these days, or more specifically, today, is that there's a record inventory of houses to look at, houses in the $500K price range used to be in the $700K price range, those prices may fall a bit more, but should not continue to fall for overly long.

Have a nice day househunting.

Note: Prices are list, not sold.