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Jed Boal reportingIn the Salt Lake County housing market, fewer buyers took advantage of good deals last month.
Home sales slowed in January to the lowest monthly sales activity in eight years. It's quite a change from a few years ago when sales were fast and furious.
Robyn Kearl and her husband moved to Salt Lake from Canada six months ago. They rented, hunted for homes, and just made an offer on a house in Sandy.
They were apprehensive at the start. "[We] didn't really want to jump into a mortgage that we couldn't afford or that house prices would drop," Kearl said. "Once we got into it, it wasn't as bad as we'd made it out to be."
They are among 30,000 households expected to be created in Utah this year.
People who want to buy now like what they see, especially with a large inventory of homes. Kearl said, "There were so many choices and options."
Good choices and few buyers. Subprime borrowers are gone from the market. Jillinda Bowers, president of Salt Lake Board of Realtors, says that 13 percent of the loans they were looking at were in the nonprime market. She says that stabilizes and creates a more honest market.
Existing home and condominium sales in Salt Lake County fell to around 600 units in January. That's down 22 percent from 777 sales in December, and a drop of 47 percent from sales in January 2007.
Realtors expect more stability and good news for buyers. Bowers says, "There's plenty of inventory to choose from. They're finding out that we are still, compared to a lot of other states, very affordable and that people are willing to negotiate and come to terms."
Nearly seven in 10 of every single-family homes sold last month had an average price below $300,000. The most active price range is between $220,000 and $240,000. But the $300,000 to $350,000 was close. Kearl says, "In this price range we were surprised at how nice the homes were."
January is typically the slowest month for home sales. The Board of Realtors already is noticing more activity for February.
