Salt Lake projected to be the West's hottest real estate market of 2025
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Salt Lake City is projected by Zillow to be the nation's 10th-hottest real estate market in 2025, topping the western region.
The big picture: Zillow's annual ranking forecasts the most competitive housing markets for buyers.
- Markets at the top of the list are largely "starved for housing inventory," the real estate platform shares with Axios.
The intrigue: Salt Lake's low inventory has famously driven up prices for years — and yet people still want to buy homes here, Zillow's senior economist Orphe Divounguy told Axios.
- That makes SLC stand out from other western cities like San Francisco, where homes are sitting on the market longer and home values are expected to depreciate.
- Utah's capital city also stands out from the nation's other hottest markets, where rising demand is driven in part by their affordability.
The other side: The high ranking suggests Salt Lake's housing crisis will probably persist, pricing lots of residents out of homeownership for yet another year.
Zoom in: Salt Lake's ranking rose from No. 18 to No. 10 because it's still more affordable than some other western cities and has "great amenities" that keep driving up demand, Divounguy said.
Between the lines: Sellers here tend to stay in town and become buyers again, while employment growth keeps the transplants coming, he said.
- That means a lot of new construction is needed — but new construction of single-family homes was about 32% below pre-pandemic levels in the first half of last year, he said.
What they're saying: "While [Salt Lake's] market will continue to loosen slowly in the coming year, it may do so at a slower pace than other large markets across the country," he said.
Zoom out: This year's hottest housing markets are spreading westward, marking a continued shift in America's centers of power and jobs.
Yes, but: The hottest markets are still mostly in the East.
- Hartford, Connecticut, and Richmond, Virginia, are the rising stars to watch in 2025. Sellers there have the upper hand as homes fly off the market at record speed.