Exploring Salt Lake City, Utah - advice for first-timer

[Kali B.]

Hi BPers,

My boyfriend and I will be in Salt Lake City next week (April 9-12) to explore the area as a possible investment location. I’ve always been attracted to the area for it’s beauty and outdoor culture, but have never visited. We are looking forward to it!

Like many others, we are new to investing. We’ve gotten our feet wet and each own homes in the Bay Area that we’ve fixed up, and now want to continue expanding with buy and hold rental properties.

• We are attracted to the Salt Lake area for many reasons including growth in business & population, international airport, outdoor culture, universities, no rent control and a long but manageable drive from the Bay Area.

• Our goal is to explore and get acquainted with the region from Ogden to Provo. Interested in SFRs and multi-family; B-C properties in A-B areas. Open to minor fixes (paint, flooring, appliances) but want to steer away from major renovations for now.

• Seeking thoughts and advice on how best to organize the three days we have - specific neighborhoods to explore (or avoid)? Any local RE meetings happening?

• Also, what are your top things to do and see in the area? We love quirky and unusual.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Kali

[Ryan E.]

@Kali B. I would classify the entire market as basically A and B neighborhoods. I would say there are C areas in West Valley City, Magna, and some parts of Salt Lake and South Salt Lake. D areas for or market might be certain areas of Ogden. Compared to other larger cities we don’t have straight “war zones”. Even those parts of Ogden I would classify as D (as compared to the rest of the market) will look decent when you drive through. 

There are a bunch of “A” and “B” areas that will have older properties: Sugar House, Cottonwood Heights, Salt Lake City (from downtown: generally the farther East you get of State St. the nicer it gets), Sandy, Murray. Areas that are really growing fast are South Jordan, Riverton, Herriman, West Jordan, and Tooele (Two-illa). Those are all in Salt Lake County except Tooele. A few months ago I read an article that said Salt Lake County has an estimated 30,000 buildable acres, most of which is near Herriman and South Jordan and West of SLC by the airport.  Utah County (Lehi, Provo, Saratoga Springs, American Fork, Provo, etc all growing rapidly as well) has an estimate 230,000. So there’s a couple of things there: 1. In my opinion Salt Lake County values will really go up in the long term as there is high desirability to live in some of these areas and limited land supply with two giant mountain ranges on east and west side of the valley. 2. There’s going to be continued massive growth in UT County. UT County is expected to rival SLC as the economic powerhouse in the State. 

Again, I’m not as familiar with the areas north of SLC by they are also full of good areas. Im also less familiar with UT County but If I was you I would spend at least two of your days driving through the neighborhoods of the worst areas and the awesome neighborhoods of a few main Cities you are most interested in. Feel free to PM me if you’d like and I’d be happy to tell you what some of those areas are for Salt Lake County. To drive from Ogden to Provo you are looking at about an hour and half and those two cities are sort of the “bookends” for the majority of the population. 

One of the big things to do in the area is to go to Temple Square. I would say it’s probabky a bit quirky if you aren’t too familiar with the Mormon church but it’s a decent tourist attraction that will help you understand the history of UT and a bit of the culture as the LDS population is probably at least half of the whole state’s pop. Besides that, go check out Park City. It’s beautiful! 

Link to article I referenced: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865691300/The-next-50-years-will-be-a-test-of-community-leadership-for-a-growing-Utah-County.html