Idaho tops states with highest housing price growth, but Utah not far behind

September 18, 2023 by Nicole Masson
Housing

https://www.ksl.com/article/50726927/idaho-tops-states-with-highest-housing-price-growth-but-utah-not-far-behind

by Katie McKellar, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — When comparing housing price growth over the past decade, Idaho is the No. 1 state in the nation to see the highest increase in home prices.

Other growing states in the West that also saw home prices jump particularly fast during the pandemic housing frenzy also top the list, with Utah coming in close behind in fourth place.

That’s according to a new ranking by the storage unit finder site, SelfStorage, which used Zillow data to compare the state’s home prices. The site compared average home prices between two periods, from 2012 to 2016 and from 2017 to 2022, to calculate each state’s home price growth.

“Idaho takes first place with a whopping increase of 78.7%,” a news release issued this week states. Idaho’s average home price from 2012 to 2016 was about $152,221. That average jumped to $272,019, an increase of $119,798, making Idaho the state with the largest percentage increase between those two time periods.

Behind Idaho, Nevada ranked No. 2 with an increase of 74.2%. Its average home price was $195,660 from 2012 to 2016, before it jumped to $340,779 in 2017 to 2022. That’s an increase of $145,119.

In third place, Washington saw an increase of 64.9%, with an average home price of $209,646 from 2012 to 2016, then $345,726 in 2017 to 2022, a $136,080 jump.

Utah ranked No. 4, with a price increase of 64.7%. The Beehive State’s average home price was $240,880 from 2012 to 2016 before it jumped to $396,824 in 2017 to 2022. That’s a price increase of $155,944. Value-wise, Utah is also the third priciest state on the list, following California and Colorado.

Here’s the full ranking:

Top 10 states with highest home price increases

Those averages, however, don’t show the full picture of just how dramatically the West’s home prices rose from 2020 to mid-2022, at the height of the pandemic housing rush.

In Utah, home prices skyrocketed by almost 50% in that time period alone. However, as soon as the days of the pandemic’s low mortgage interest rates ended with rapid rate increases as the Federal Reserve battled to tamp down record inflation levels, the West was also the hardest hit.

Heightened mortgage interest rates, these days hovering over 7%, prompted a divided real estate correction, with prices rising in the East, while prices declined in many areas in the West.

Boise was among the first cities to see a year-over-year home value decline in Zillow’s Home Value Index, and Fortune recently ranked it the No. 1 housing market to see the largest home price declines from June 2022 until June of 2023, according to the Freddie Mac House Price Index.

Two housing markets in Utah — Ogden and Provo — ranked close behind in the same analysis.

Today, Utah’s home prices are starting to climb back up after they appeared to bottom this winter, proving resilience amid our new normal of high interest rates despite a major slowdown in sales. Housing experts point to the state’s stubborn housing shortage and low market availability as factors that have pressurized prices and led them to keep climbing.

For example, Utah’s most populated county, Salt Lake County, saw its median single-family home price fall to $582,500 in the second quarter of 2023, marking a 7% decline from $623,138 in the second quarter of 2022, according to the Salt Lake Board of Realtors. But in July, Salt Lake County’s median single-family price climbed to $610,000, up nearly 14% from when the county’s median price bottomed in January at $535,700.