However, the price reductions haven't had much impact on completed sales prices thus far, at least statewide through the month of June. The median sales price for stand-alone homes, townhouses, and condos in Utah for the month of June fell $5,050 from what it was in May or -0.94% (from $535,050 to $530,000). Of course, those prices are significantly lower than what they were in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County but I haven't seen any data on those entities thus far for that timeframe and neither the city nor county lead the way in being the priciest in the state.
A property's initial asking price was, and still is to a lesser degree, somewhat deceptive. My next door neighbor very recently sold his home in 17 days, an eternity compared to just a couple months ago. He decided to start at a "Calizuela asking price", based on the prior behavior of the market and advice from his realtor. After receiving no offers from Calizuelans, he reduced the price by $35,000 to $775,000 after 15 days and it sold 2 days later. Interestingly, the 4 closest homes for sale to my neighbor's (not located in our 257-home subdivision but in adjoining subdivisions) all sold within 5 days after his as best I can tell. All were listed for as much or more than my neighbor's but I didn't follow closely enough to know whether any price reductions on those properties occurred. I believe setting an overly high asking price when one's home first went on the market was quite common in this area but that practice is probably fading away more with each passing week. There's been a couple significant interest rate increases by the Fed in the last couple months with more on the way, so we'll see how the local real estate market responds going forward.
July was an even more sluggish month for the U.S. housing market as sales of previously owned homes slipped by 6% from June and a whopping 20.2% year over year.
www.ksl.com
coloradosun.com
www.bloomberg.com
whitefishpilot.com
