The Wasatch Front housing market is coolin’

Salt Lake City, Provo, Ogden, Boise, and Sacramento were the top five metros with the biggest increase in the share of listings with price drops from a year earlier. Photo: Parker Malatesta

SALT LAKE CITY — Real estate brokerage Redfin released a report last week showing price drops in several western housing markets that have been booming due to pandemic migration.

47.8% of homes for sale in Provo had a price drop in May, the highest share of the 108 metro areas surveyed. Salt Lake City wasn’t far behind, with 45.8% of homes for sales recording a price cut.

Share of homes with price drops in other notable cities:

• Denver — 46.9%
• Boise — 44.2%
• Ogden — 42.6%
• Portland — 42%

“There are two kinds of sellers in today’s market: Those who already know the market has cooled, and those who are learning about the cooling market as they go through the selling process,” said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather.

“The former wants to sell quickly before the market slows further and they’re willing to price slightly below comparable homes in their neighborhood right away, and the latter may have to drop their price if their home doesn’t attract buyers within a few weeks. As more sellers come to terms with the slowing market, fewer homes will have price drops.”

Salt Lake City, Provo, Ogden, Boise, and Sacramento were the top five metros with the biggest increase in the share of listings with price drops from a year earlier.

Four of the 10 metros with the highest share of price drops–Provo, Salt Lake City, Boise and Ogden–are among the 10 places where prices increased most during the pandemic. Prices shot up 65.7% to $550,000 from May 2020 to May 2022 in Provo. They rose 56.2% to $556,000 in Salt Lake City, 66.7% in Boise to $550,000, and 57.2% to $500,000 in Ogden.

“The soaring prices were largely due to out-of-town homebuyers moving in during the pandemic, competing with locals for a limited supply of homes,” writes the report’s author Dana Anderson.

Migration into both Boise and the Salt Lake City metro area–which includes Provo and Ogden–nearly tripled throughout 2020. The trend has started to reverse in both places, with Salt Lake City seeing a net outflow (more Redfin.com users looking to leave than move in) for the first time on record in the first quarter.