THE ECONOMIST: How Utahns are working together to reclaim housing affordability

Robert Spendlove 

For Utahns who want to buy a home — or who hope their children and grandchildren can someday buy a home in Utah — that dream has been slipping further out of reach over the past 10 years.

The average home price in Utah has more than doubled over the past decade. From January 2015 to January 2025, Utah’s typical home value jumped from $226,551 to $517,331, according to the Zillow Home Values Index.

While housing inflation has slowed since 2022, Utahns are still spending a disproportionate amount of their income on housing costs.

To buy a house in the Salt Lake City metro area in 2025, the typical family would need to allocate nearly 42 percent of their monthly income toward housing costs, compared to 23 percent in 2015, according to Zillow data. Typically, spending more than 30 percent of total household income on housing is considered unaffordable.

Housing affordability is important not only to individuals who want to live and work in Utah, but also to the health of the overall economy. It impacts the state’s ability to attract and retrain workers, maintain economic mobility, provide housing security and address homelessness.

While there is no silver-bullet solution to making housing more affordable in Utah, leaders across the state are working to confront this challenge.

One imperative is building homes fast enough to keep pace with demand. Utah added more than a half-million residents over the past decade, growing from a population of roughly 3 million in 2015 to more than 3.5 million today. But housing construction has lagged population growth for more than a decade, causing a housing shortage that drove up prices. A 2023 legislative audit noted that “at no point since 2011 has Utah had enough housing.”

In his 2025 State of the State address, Gov. Spencer Cox announced plans to construct 35,000 starter homes within five years. Ogden City Mayor Ben Nodalski is leading a new citywide planning effort, “Plan Ogden,” that prioritizes single-family homeownership. Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson reported that more than $25 million were recently invested into affordable housing projects, creating nearly1,600 rental units across the county. And by early 2026, Salt Lake City will double the number of housing units under affordability protections compared to 10 years ago, according to city officials.

State lawmakers have tackled housing affordability from a variety of angles, from passing bills funding homebuyer incentives to programs expanding homebuilders’ access to capital.

Additionally, community-focused companies like Zions Bank have joined with public and private investors to address Utah’s housing crisis across the continuum of need — including housing preservation and construction as well as equity generation for renters. Zions Bank, for example, made founding investments in the Utah Housing Preservation Fund, Rocky Mountain Homes Fund and the Perpetual Housing Fund of Utah.

The 2023 legislative audit estimated that Utah needs to build 27,900 housing units per year to keep pace with forecasted population growth. Moreover, Utah could begin to run out of space for housing in less than 20 years.

Meeting this demand within existing land constraints will require a reimaging of what homebuyers demand and what homebuilders provide. While Utah cities have traditionally favored single-family homes, Utah needs more housing density and a variety of housing options, including more multi-family units and “mother-in-law apartments.”

Utah is known for its high quality of life, a well-educated and dynamic workforce and a business-friendly environment where companies can grow and thrive. However, while in the past Utah was also defined by a relatively lower cost of living, the current lack of affordable housing could change that. This will have an impact on the ability to attract and retain future workers, especially young or lower-income families. There are no easy solutions to these struggles, but working together, community leaders, policymakers and business leaders are trying to address this pressing problem.

Robert Spendlove is the senior economist for Zions Bank in Salt Lake City.