Utah’s housing affordability improved slightly over the past year, but that doesn’t mean the market is any more welcoming to first-time buyers.
A new report from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute shows that while the state has made some incremental improvements over the past year in areas like the number of affordable rental units on the market and the required income to purchase a median-priced home, homeownership has still dropped to historic lows. Now, a whopping 91% of Utah renters are unable to enter the homebuying market.
“Looking at those numbers, it's hard not to be a little bit depressed,” said Steve Waldrip, Gov. Spencer Cox’s Senior Advisor for Housing Strategy, during a Sept. 9 panel discussion on the findings. “And I'm sitting here going, ‘What have I been doing for the last couple of years?’”
According to the report, 68.3% of Utah households in 2025 owned their home, compared to 69.9% 10 years ago. Homeowners under 35 saw the sharpest decline, with rates in that cohort dipping 1.6 percentage points to 41.3% over the last decade.
Waldrip has been the driver of Cox’s ambitious housing agenda, which includes 35,000 new starter homes by the end of 2028. While the data shows some progress toward that goal, big hurdles still stand in the way of significant change.
One of the biggest challenges facing first-time buyers in recent years is the money required for a down payment and the income needed to afford a mortgage. Even though the required income for a median-priced home in Utah shrank by about $2,000 over the last year to $147,000 per year, that’s still roughly $69,000 more than what was needed in 2020.
The pandemic caused an anomalous spike in home prices and a rapid rise in interest rates. Between 2021 and 2022 alone, the average monthly mortgage payment after a 10% down payment went from $2,384 to $3,328 — a full 40% increase. In 2025, that number grew to $3,725.
That higher monthly mortgage payment, according to the report, is what makes homeownership a financial impossibility for most Utah renters.
While the report might not have all good news, real estate broker and Salt Lake Board of Realtors President Scott Colemere said it still showed “steps in the right direction.”
He stressed the importance of putting the COVID-era price spikes, which he called “the most dramatic rise in the shortest period of time that I've ever seen in my 30-year career,” into context. After such a dramatic rise in prices and lending costs, you just don’t see an equally dramatic slowdown.
“The housing market doesn't turn on a dime,” he said. “It turns slowly, and that's a good thing because when it does move too quickly, like what we experienced during COVID, it's not healthy for the overall market.”
Despite the disappointing outlook for first-time buyers, Colemere said it’s still possible to get into the market; it just might require some sweat equity, creativity or willingness to relocate outside your preferred area.
Another spectre looming over the future of the housing market is Utah’s rapid growth. The state’s population is expected to grow from 3.6 million residents today to 5.6 million by 2065. The housing report said that to keep up with that pace, the state will need 280,000 more housing units in just the next decade.
One way to do that, said developer and founder of housing nonprofit HomeOwnership4u Steven Bond, is building smaller.
“We built big homes because we've had big families, but we now have a declining household size, and it's time to think about smaller homes on smaller footprints to make it more attainable,” Bond said. “I think many of us grew up in a home where we shared a bedroom with not a walk-in closet, and all the kids shared a bathroom, which was also the guest bathroom. And you're OK. We're OK. So we need more of that.”
The idea also has Waldrip’s support. He pointed to historic neighborhoods in the greater Salt Lake City area built in the post-WWII housing boom that contain smaller homes on small lots.
But doing that today — so far — has proven easier said than done. Proposed legislation earlier this year to allow housing development on small lots statewide did not get far after pushback from local governments. For that dream of smaller housing to come to fruition in the near term, it’s on the backs of cities and towns across the state to make those changes themselves.
Some already have. Salt Lake City, for example, passed residential zoning reform in 2023 and is eyeing further changes to make it easier to build smaller homes on smaller lots.
For those in real estate like Colemere, the future can feel uncertain, but history shows that challenging market cycles — like the one today and the one after the 2008 financial crisis — can eventually give way to new opportunities.
“Whenever the market cycles are difficult, there's always this overwhelming sense of fear and questioning of whether life will ever return to normal,” he said. “But they can be overcome.”
Editor’s note: KUER is a licensee of the University of Utah but operates as an editorially independent news organization.
