Election Fever

 

Enough with Covid 19, who’s feeling the symptoms of Election Fever?

I know I am.

It comes with a headache, sometimes nausea, and often makes you want to social distance by much more than 6 feet.

The funny thing is, we go through this every four years. You think we’d be used to it by now. But every election year, it seems like the whole world is going to fall apart if one party gets elected over another.

I don’t know what the right answer is, but one thing is certain, and that is this: A Leisure Villas 55+ community, will still be the best choice for active adults who are looking for a new home.

Sorry if you don’t agree with this political opinion, but it’s true!

How will this election affect the real estate market in Utah?

Hot or Cold

If you’ve been following the market here in Utah for the last few months and years, you’re probably wondering why homes are becoming so expensive.

For you, assuming that you own your own home, this isn’t going to be terribly bad. The frenzy of demand has upped the value of your home also, so moving into a new place is going to be a fair enough trade.

The problem I see, is for new homebuyers. Where are they going to buy into? It used to be that you could have a starter home on a ¼ acre lot. Now those same lots are selling for as much as it cost to build a whole house plus the land, and that was only 10 years ago.

Now, a starter home looks a lot different. Very small footprints with lots and lots of stairs.

I don’t see this current election changing the pent up demand here in Utah for a while. There are so many people needing homes, so few job seekers looking to join the construction ranks, too much bureaucracy involved in permitting new communities and new homes, too many current residents who fight against new development, and now we can’t even get raw or finished materials in like we used to.

All of this we’ve been dealing with for several years now, but that last one, the shortages on materials, is new. If our new elected officials do anything, I hope they keep in mind these shortages. It’s a fine balance of juggling public health and economic stability.

Where do prices go from here?

For the foreseeable future, Utah home prices are likely to continue climbing. This Summer and Fall, we, along with many other home-builders, saw a massive spike in new home sales. This caught many of us off-guard, and because of this, we ended up selling in advance, a lot more homes that we thought we would. Most of our ready-to-move-into homes sold out, and we filled the next several months worth of upcoming builds.

As prices of materials have gone up, and as demand has climbed, we, along with most other builders, were forced to raise prices. Since there are even less houses on the market now, compared to how many people are needing to buy a home, the next year is likely to only see more price increases across all homes in Utah, Salt Lake, Davis, and Weber counties.

When will this housing boom end? Nobody knows. But you can bet that once you start seeing a lot of house flipping in the market again, then this streak will be nearing correction levels. At this point though, the house flippers aren’t in force yet.

Only time will tell. We started seeing slowdowns last year, but those all ended this Summer. There were some deals to be had last Summer and Fall, but I can only imagine that if you were trying to time the market, then last year was your year. Otherwise, you probably missed it, and we’re in for another 3-4 years of rising prices, and I don’t see that changing, regardless of who gets elected.