SALT LAKE CITY — The financial services company Fiserv Inc. recently released a new study of more than 380-plus U.S. housing markets and forecast recovering prices for many of the housing markets across 2012 and 2013. Though the national housing average is forecast to still be in the red for 2012, one of the markets that is forecast to raise is the Salt Lake City metro area.
The study shows an average of a 31 percent decrease in home prices across the last five years in the U.S. from the third quarter of 2006 to the third quarter of 2011. This decrease shows the heart of the recent recession and its effects on the average family’s largest investment. Across the same five-year period, prices in the Salt Lake area decreased by a little over 16 percent. This is half the fall that the nation experienced on average, but still a painful drop.
However, Fiserv forecasts for 2012 show a 1.5 percent growth in prices on average in the Salt Lake area from third quarter of 2011 to that same quarter in 2012. At the same time, the U.S. is still forecast to have prices decrease by almost 3 percent. In Utah in 2013, however, the study forecasts further increases in Salt Lake and the nation of 7.4 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively.
The study also examines a home affordability ratio in all 380-plus markets by examining the median family income and the area’s median price for a home. The ratio is created by taking the median home price and dividing it by the median family income. At the Utah housing price peak in late 2007, the home affordability ratio was a high 3.3. But in the third quarter of last year, Utah saw a glimmer of light by seeing this number decline to a 2.7 with a median family income being $67,200 and the median home price of $183,000.
As the final effects of this recession begin to fade, more positive signs of markets recovering and home prices stabilizing may be more prevalent, giving hope back to the nation.
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