@vera
@Vera Herlihy
I'd hate to highjack this thread more than I already have, but just wanted to throw my 2cents in... When you look at the market here, try not to mix Salt Lake City with the tech booming area, like American Fork, Lehi, Riverton and Herriman. SLC has very different demographic than the silicon slopes proximity.
Source: http://www.bestplaces.net/compare-cities/salt_lake...
1. Silicon Slopes proximity has a mixture of very heavily dense Mormon residents (as you can see the mormon resident percentage is translated in the low median age), college students from both out of state and in-state (especially Provo, Orem, Vineyard. A lot of mormon students at BYU are already married and starting family while they're in school ) and the tech employees. The closer you get to Provo, the heavier the mormon density is. The growing tech metro area is about in the middle between SLC and Provo, which is Herriman, Riverton, Bluffdale, American Fork, Lehi, Highland, and Provo-orem area. Provo & Orem (and Vineyard) have way more college students. Because of the geographic of the Utah valley there is a limitation for the population growth to expand to, the more rural areas will become much more heavily dense as well. And they will start building up, and I'm already starting to see many high rise housings in the tech boom epicenter.
What I have learned from reading multiple credible (mainly government data) market reports both macro and micro, I don't see any indication of a housing bubble in the foreseeable future. The housing shortage has been causing quite a bump in home prices lately, but I see a good consistency in the population and land/home appreciation growth. My personal prediction for my own investments is that the correction will probably happen sometime in the next couple years, but I don't think it will be anything like the last crash but rather moderate, and that it will not stop Utah from growing. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty confident in the amount of work and time I've invested in researching this market myself. You would be surprised how highly educated people here are down in Utah county, most of them are genuinely good-hearted and hard working here and make REALLY good tenants. I say that as non-mormon person who has lived in SLC for 7 years and in Provo-Orem area for over a year. The business industries have a very firm and healthy backbones. The mormons aren't going anywhere, and they will keep having kids. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2017/04/03...
Also, I feel a bit more optimistic about our market because with rental investments, even if a correction occurred, or something unpredictable happens, the renters aren't going anywhere, because those parents 3-5 kids who can't afford the mortgage will still have to put their family in a home somewhere. And by then there will be lots of new builds to compete with. Imagine buying an old crappy duplex and having to put my money and time into rehabbing it and keep paying more out of pocket to maintain it, AND having to compete with all those newly built townhomes down the road. I would rather buy a brand new condo or townhome which will have better rents and better quality tenants. As long as I don't have to sell (which I won't because I will have my newly built investment properties which only cost me 10% down, which pays for itself, has 100% ROI in 3 years and will be worth much more. I could also flip it in a year or two to gain an instant profit so I can roll it into newer and bigger multi), I fell pretty good about my choice of investment.
From Salt Lake Board of Realtors 2017 Salt Lake Housing Market Forecast:
