Utah’s luxury home market remains strong. Here’s why.

Price is king for the typical Utahn looking to buy a home, but luxury homebuyers are focused on locations that fit their lifestyle — and in Utah, the high-end housing market is doing well.

A report on the outlook of the state’s luxury real estate market from Sotheby’s describes the overall housing market in the U.S. as “sluggish,” while the luxury market shows “continued signs of strength.”

Utah’s general housing market across the Wasatch Front has started to stagnate and recover, said Scott Colemere, president of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors and principal broker at Colemere Realty Associates, but first-time homebuyers need more properties.

Yet housing opportunities abound even for people entering the state’s luxury market, said agents with Summit Sotheby’s International Realty.

“There’s been so much wealth creation in the last few years,” said Gretchen Hudgens, an agent with Summit Sotheby’s who also is president of the Park City Board of Realtors.

And rather than waiting decades to inherit wealth, she said, younger buyers are increasingly entering the luxury market with financial help from parents, allowing them to purchase resort homes earlier in life.

‘Price is paramount’

Amid Utah’s ongoing housing crisis, Colemere said, most people are driven by their budget.

“We’re seeing that price is paramount to buyers,” he said. “If they have to go further out to get price and affordability, they’re looking to do it.”

A lot of people want to be in the southern part of the Salt Lake Valley for their commute, he said, but Utah County offers a more affordable alternative to the state’s most populous county.

In the first three months of this year, the middle price point for homes sold in Salt Lake County was $610,000, according to data provided by the Salt Lake Board of Realtors. It was around $580,000 in Utah County.

For people who work downtown or around Capitol Hill but can’t afford to live in Salt Lake City neighborhoods, the typical home price was $550,000 in Davis County and below $500,000 in Tooele and Weber counties.

It’s essentially “drive ‘til you qualify,” said Colemere, a third-generation realtor with 30 years of industry experience.

That isn’t new to the Wasatch Front housing market, he said, but it is “really looming large right now” as interest rates remain high.

Current interest rates are around 6.5% in Utah. That’s good for a lot of other markets, Colemere said, but “the price increase during COVID-19 with that makes affordability a crisis.”

Colemere is “in meetings constantly where affordability is the point of conversation,” he said, and the real estate industry is part of work to improve things by advocating for fewer government regulations and helping individuals take steps like buying down interest rates to improve their purchasing power.

Home values aren’t jumping as much as they were, he said, which is a sign of recovery. That process is uncomfortable for buyers, he said, but it will get better with time.

‘About the lifestyle’

Luxury buyers aren’t feeling that same pain.

As the Sotheby’s report puts it, headlines about the economy haven’t changed the fact that the “world’s wealthiest buyers were quietly doing what they’ve always done – buying.”

Their wealth means they don’t have limited purchasing power, said Lacy Harrison, who works with Hudgens at Summit Sotheby’s.

“It’s more about the lifestyle than necessity,” she said while sitting at the dining table at a home for sale in the White Pine Ranches. The six-bed, eight-bath property includes dedicated ski-in, ski-out access to the Tombstone lift at Park City Mountain Resort. “They have the time and the luxury to wait and buy that perfect property that fits all of their needs.”

A luxury home has historically been defined as big and lavish, Harrison said, but is being redefined by accessibility and relaxing, along with “privacy and quality of life.” Health, wellness, lifestyle and social connectivity are priorities, the Sotheby’s realtors said.

The home in White Pine Ranches has a large, open living room but also has smaller, intimate spaces for gathering with what Hudgens and Harrison describe as curated design and a homier feel.

It’s nestled in the trees with direct access to a ski lift, but is also less than 15 minutes from the heart of Main Street.

All for a price tag of $23.5 million.

And though luxury buyers aren’t as deterred by rising insurance costs, higher property taxes and inflation, they do have some concerns.

New homes are a little less appealing because of rising labor costs and tariffs making it harder to price materials, the report reads.

Buyers want a completed home, Hudgens said, that they can walk into and start enjoying.

“They don’t want to have to worry about a remodel,” she said. “They don’t want to have to put their mark on it.”

Even if their own new-build home were done, she said, having construction in the rest of the neighborhood would affect their lifestyle. They’d prefer everything already be “dialed in,” she said.

“When they get to a resort destination, they want to unplug,” she said.

There are exceptions, she said, like some people who will buy from the Four Seasons, Waldorf Astoria and similar brands no matter where they build.

Good signs all around

For the buyer looking further from Salt Lake City to own a home and the one deciding between Park City, Aspen and Sun Valley, the difference comes down not just to money, but motivation.

“We’re all in different phases of life,” Harrison said. “The broader market looks very different to luxury buyers and what they’re wanting to chase down.”

While the two segments of the market are vastly different, agents said, there are signs of balance in both that weren’t there during and immediately after the pandemic.

The luxury market in Park City is particularly healthy, Hudgens and Harrison said, as people discover it’s more affordable compared to the rest of the Mountain West, and there is access to an airport, Target and Costco.

And the overall market is starting to recover, Colemere said, with lower appreciation and flattening prices elsewhere in the state.