According to a story which ran on August 16th in the Deseret News entitled Real Estate Still Looks Rosy in Utah some so called experts painted a fairly buoyant picture of the Utah housing market.

Utah’s housing market remains one of the strongest in the countrt and yet it has shown “definite signs of weakness” it was reported.

Statistics can confuse and can be slanted to achieve almost any result but core stats such as the fact that single family building permits have decreased 20 percent since January 2006 is undeniable evidence of a downturn.

The biggest difficulty in Utah as in many western countries is purely affordability.

This is because house prices in the state are increasing at least twice as fast as incomes are growing. The beauty of real estate markets is that they are always eventually self correcting. As affordability plummets sales must drop due to fewer buyers and less demand. The drop in sale causes what…? Yes, you guessed it falling prices. Witness a property cycle in action…..

The important thing to remember as a buyer or seller is that the Utah region has a lot of things going for it.

For instance, joblessness is at an all time low, wages are rising and new commercial construction is up to compensate somewhat for the residential downturn.

So if you’re thinking about buying a home in Utah, should you wait?

Well so long as you take a long term view and see your purchase as both housing and investment then there is no reason to delay buying. The beauty of a falling market is that it’s the earliest point at which you can start to get ready for when the market is next going to rise. A wise saying goes along these lines - it’s not market timing that’s important it’s time in the market.