"Running in place."
That was a real estate watcher’s assessment of the industry in Salt Lake County in 2025, and also his expectation for 2026.
“The operative notion for this last year really is ‘running in place.’ 2025 was very much like 2024,” James Wood, Ivory-Boyer senior fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, said at a housing forecast event hosted by the Salt Lake Board of Realtors.
“The last couple of years, we’ve been back to the level of sales of the Great Recession period. … It’s a market that’s really holding its own but really running in place.”
Residential sales and the median price of a home in the county saw little change in 2025. Sales were down 2.4 percent to 11,797 homes, while the median sales price grew 1.9 percent to $550,000. In 2022-25, the median price grew just 3.8 percent, from $530,000 to $550,000. Median days on the market grew from 29 in 2024 to 36 in 2025.
Real estate sales per 1,000 population were running at the lowest level in the past quarter-century.
“Sales prices were up but at a pretty meager level, which is really good. We need that to improve affordability,” Wood said.
Prices in the county grew a massive 40 percent from 2020 to 2022 but cooled unexpectedly in 2023. Price increases have stabilized since then.
“We are catching our breath right now,” Wood said. “It’s taken a couple of years.”
Housing prices, he said, are “sticky,” unlikely to fall except if there is a serious recession, which leads to foreclosures and slipping property values.
Expect stable home prices for two more years, he said.
“The demand is still a bit weak because of affordability, so the prices, I think, are going to struggle for a little while,” Wood said. “And that’s not bad because we are one of the highest-priced markets in the country, in the metropolitan area of Salt Lake. … It’s going to be another year, 18 months, before we see much movement in housing prices.”
Wood expects Salt Lake County single-family homes sales this year to rise 2 percent to 8,600 units. Sales of condos, townhomes and twin homes likely will increase 3 percent to 3,500 units. Overall, the total is 12,100 units, or 2.5 percent. Median sales prices should remain flat.
“Just hang in there,” he advised the audience, which consisted of real estate officials. “Better times are ahead,” he said, with 2026 probably mimicking what the county saw the past couple of years. “Plan on about what you did last year. If you do better than that, congratulations.”
Nonetheless, Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist and vice president of research at the National Association of Realtors, said Salt Lake City remains a top 10 hot-spot market for housing. Its advantages include a young population, job growth, and in-migration of people from outside the state.
Nationally, the past three years have been sluggish, but the existing-home sales volume, despite still being below the 5 million mark, should rise 14 percent this year from a flat 2025, she said. New-home sales likely will grow 5 percent, compared to a 2 percent decline last year. And median home prices are expected to jump 4 percent, compared to 3 percent last year.
Both Wood and Lautz decried affordability issues preventing young people from getting into homeownership. First-timers nationally accounted for an all-time low of 21 percent of the homeownership market. It was 44 percent in 1981 and once was as high as 50 percent.
Repeat homebuyers have a median age of 62 — it once was 36 — and they also are likely to hold on to their home for 15 to 20 years.
Lautz noted that the median age of first-time homebuyers is 40, much higher than the traditional 28 to 32. And they aren’t likely to move anytime soon, she said.
Wood said he can relate to the trend. “I’ve got people in my basement,” he said to the audience giggles. “I’m sure I’m not alone.”