Utah house market still tough for buyers, with median price over half-million

2024 was another roller coaster of a year for those looking to buy a home in Utah, as interest rates and prices continue to stay high. According to real estate giant Zillow, the current median average for a home in Utah is $517,823. That's up 1.4% this year. While still not an all-time high, when you compare that number to December of 2019, with an average of $344,000, that's over a $170,000 increase in just five years. Just over 13,400 homes are for sale right now in Utah, according to Zillow. Well, make that one less, with Brian Thompson just buying one. Buying a house? Yeah. Yeah, these days it's a lot harder than it used to be. Like many, he's been looking for a while. There was a lot of homes, but none of them, everything was way overpriced. And so we finally found one that was priced right. Priced right, but? It got put on the market on Thursday. By Friday, we had put an offer in, and by Monday there were six offers on the house. Brian isn't alone. The average time on the market to pending is 29 days. Realtors agree a balanced, healthy market averages out to about 60 days. So there's a lot more competition. Six offers in three days is kind of an intense amount of offers. So how did Brian cut through? Well, he wrote a letter. I told him how I was a teacher, and my wife works in education also, and their parents had worked in education, so that's kind of why they chose our offer out of the six. But on top of competition and price, interest rates have remained high, and the Fed has announced in 2025 rates will largely remain unchanged. Still, Utahns like Thompson are fighting through to achieve their goals, the hope being that something will ease the pressure. And I don't know if we necessarily want prices to drop too much, because that's a downturn in the economy and a lot of people will be in trouble. But if interest rates drop, it would help everybody. Spencer Joseph, Fox 13 News, Utah.