The View from Downtown: Salt Lake City

I had the good fortune of traveling to Salt Lake City this week for a tech conference, held at the Little America Hotel.

Salt Lake City is very nice. It's sunny, it's clean. Many of the buildings even remind me of art-deco buildings in NYC and NJ. Yet, they appear to lack the years of neglect and chaos.

Additionally, there are great things going on in SLC. I think it's on its way to be a great real estate market (or is already). Here are some quick facts / opinions:

* Homeownership rate is only 49.5% as given by the US Census Bureau. Utah is clearly a state where homeownership is common, given the 70% average in the remainder of the state. This is low for the state, and likely provides a good tenant base in the town, hard to find elsewhere.

* The region reminds me of Denver 15-20 years ago. Denver has clearly boomed in real estate, if I was to pick a new heir to the Rocky Mountain thrown, this would be it.

* The vacation potential in the region is excellent. Park City and the ski slopes being the primary reason northeasterners ever make it to this great town.

* An influx of a growing tech sector provides many white-collar tech jobs subject to a lot of flux. These are the kind of people who may tend toward home ownership, but may choose to rent so they can move around later. This is a great A class tenant.

* The downtown is vibrant, growing, and full of good hip establishments.