March Real Estate Market Update

Our agents break down the February 2026 Utah real estate market update and dive into the key shifts shaping this year’s housing market. With fresh data from the Utah Association of REALTORS®, we take a closer look at what rising inventory, steady pricing, and shifting buyer behavior really mean heading into spring.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Buff Show, a show brought to you by Mountain Buff Real Estate. We are dedicated to chasing down the buffs of the world and bringing their expertise right to you. All right, guys. Welcome to the buff show. Today me and Cade are doing a retake of our latest market update. So we're in March, looking back at February's numbers. So how's it been going, Cade? Good. Good idea. Rates have kind of sucked lately. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Yeah, that's the biggest unknown, I think, is what they're going to continue to do, you know, with with the war and everything. I think they're pretty volatile, and I think we're kind of just just watching, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

There's a lot of fear in the market right now, I'm seeing. Um and it's it's crazy because I'm working on the refinance and I got a rate locked at 5.65 on a refinance, and I did that lock like, I don't know, month or so ago. February probably. Yeah. And now they're like pushing seven. Like six point eight, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is wild. It can change quick. Yeah. That's so change quick. I'm like both ways too. Um I'm so happy that I I locked because we had Shelby on the podcast talking about when to do a refinance, and I was like, oh, now's a good time. And after we did that, I started working on it, and then rates shot right back up. So there's stores you never know. It's crazy. New listings are up four percent compared to that of last year. So we're getting some more inventory here. Um pending sales are up 2.9% compared to that of last year. So we're still down quite a bit from the the high of 2020, 2021, but we're kind of like creeping up, like we're coming out of that lull of the winter and hitting a time when it's gonna spike up here. We'll probably be over 4,000, mid-4,000s here soon.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Um closed sales, we are down 2.3% from 290 from 2,900 to just, or from sorry, from th just over 3,000 to 2,900. We kind of talked about this a little bit last time when we filmed it. Why pending sales, new listings, and then I think you just did pending sales too, right? Yeah, it's on the back side. While that why they're up, but closed sales are down.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah. What did we come up with?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Well, I think what we thought the thought was is that we're seeing a lot of transactions not go through.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

We're seeing a lot of people go under contract on a property and um go through with it? For whatever reason. Maybe, you know, like like you said, we've kind of been in this situation where rates have jumped up pretty significantly. Typically, when you go in on and you go under contract, you lock your rate there. But yeah um, maybe there's a lot of fear in the market that that way, or a lot of time buyers have a lot of time to process the the purchase, do their inspections and all that stuff. Maybe that's what's making them back up. I don't know. Yeah. Um days on market until a sale. So this is the average number of days between when a property is listed and when an offer is accepted in a given month. Um, February of 2025, we were at 74. February 2026, we're at 79 with a 6.8% increase.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Which is a big, that's a big jump. 79 days on market. That's a that's a ways. Like you're you're filling it if you're a seller, you're like, come on, where's the body?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Two and a half months before you get go under go under contract.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yeah. But we're still a ways away from like 2008 to 2012, like the great recession. You were 130 to 140 days on market on average then. So but it we're creeping up there. Yeah. Um, median sales price, we are up one percent to five oh five, five hundred and five thousand median sales price here. And if you look at the the charts, it's just been pretty flat, like flatlinings for the past since 2023. It's been pretty pretty slow, pretty dang f slow. Um, average sales price, we are up 2.2%, so very in line with the median, um up to 661,000 on average. And uh it's crazy how much those numbers are different, but um it's still helpful to look at both right now.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

So one thing I I will just mention really quick is don't just because you know these stats, these numbers don't show a big increase in price or appreciation over the last, you know, two, three years. It's still very specific on properties. Oh, for sure. So communities, I've had both sides. I've had people come to me who bought two years ago who or would like to sell, and realistically they can't unless they want to take a hit, right? I also have people who bought two years ago that would like to sell and can and actually can make a little bit of money. So don't if you're motivated and you think you'd like to go ahead and list, talk, talk, talk with your agent, figure it out. He can, he or she can, you know, poke comps and all that stuff and see if it's doable. Yeah, for sure. Um this is the the percent of original list price received. So this is the percentage found when dividing a property sell price by its original list price and taking the average for all properties sold in a given month, not accounting for seller concessions. So we are down 0.4% from 96.5 to 96.1. So this just means if you listed your house at$100,000, you're likely gonna get$96,000 for that property. So, and that does not include concessions. And typically for con sessions, I guess another one, that's okay. Um, we're seeing what, two to two and a half, three percent roughly.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Yeah, roughly. Yeah, and that's helping buyers pay down their closing costs, um, doing interest rate buy downs and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

So Yeah. The housing affordability index, I'm gonna try my best on this one. This one's pretty confusing. So the definition says this index measures housing affordability for the region. For example, in a in an index of 120 means the median household income is 120% of what is necessary to qualify for the median priced home under prevailing interest rates. A higher number means greater affordability. So the higher the number, the more affordable the market is. Right now we're at 84, which I'm thinking this right. It means your income is 16% down from being affordable at 100%. Yeah, roughly right, yeah. So we're getting better. We were up 6.3% from 79. Um, but we're still I mean, as of February, we're getting better. I think that's gonna change.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Well, yeah, I think March is gonna tell a different story because rates were good and now they just became not good. This February we were low sixes, we high fives. Yeah, we were getting so excited in in February. I was like, the market, finally, it's coming back. Weather's heating up, and then this whole war in Iran.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

And now you get cold tooth this week.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah, and it's cold. Yeah, this week. We got rain coming in. Yeah. It man. We'll see. The the real estate markets like Utah's weather patterns, like you don't know what you're gonna get.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

I saw false spring is always here.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

I saw a picture of somebody up at their cabin, and it was like March 31st of like 23 and March 31st of this year, and it was like no snow, and then like you could barely see see the cabin. Yeah, it was wild, it's crazy. All right, inventory of homes for sale. We are up 4.7%. Um, we just were at 13,889 homes for sale um in the month of February. So more inventory, which we knew that. Um see if I hit both of those. Yep. And then month supply. Um so this basically the inventory of homes for sale at the end of a given month divided by the average monthly pending sales from the last 12 months. So February of 2025, we were 3.8. February of 2026, we are again 3.8. So about even there. Um you got to keep in mind anything under like a six, six-month supply is considered a seller's market. Anything over six month supply is considered a buyer's market. But like Cade was saying, the areas in the cities and the neighborhoods change so much with this. So there's gonna be some neighborhoods and areas in Utah where it is a buyer's market, and there's gonna be other areas in Utah where it's a super strong seller's market. So it just depends.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I mean, you're definitely seeing properties that are sitting on the market for a while right now, and you're also seeing properties that are on the market and then they're under contract in seven days, ten days, twelve days.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

We just close on the house. Um, I was representing the seller, and we had buyers come along and they had a house to sell. And I'm like, oh, these never work, right? And but we did a time clause because that house wasn't sitting or it was just sitting, like we weren't getting a whole lot of activity. We did a time clause. The buyers had their house under contract that weekend and closed like 30 days later. Yeah. Which doesn't happen, but it was in Salt Lake, and so it was like gone in two seconds.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah, definitely where where you price your home at, how you market it, um, and then your location makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah, absolutely. Huge difference. So yeah. Well, um, any advice you'd be given to buyers, sellers, or people listening right now?

SPEAKER_01 10:07

If you're even considering it, reach out to your real estate team, talk with them, get a game plan figured out, nail it down, and then just do it. You know what I mean? Like whatever makes sense for you and your situation, get a game plan, talk with your real estate team, whoever that is, and do it.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah. I think it's easy to get like stuck in your head when it comes to making a big move. Um and like action, and just like Cade said, like making the phone calls, like starting some type of progressive movement towards that really starts to close in the gap, and you're like, oh, this is either doable or like, no, let's not do it. Um, a lot of people like they wait too long and then it's like, we gotta be out of here like yesterday. And it's like, okay, like slow down. Right. Let's come up with a plan. Because if you are, if you are well thought out and planned and you have a strategy in place and the right team in place, like your experience, how it's gonna go, the money you'll either be able to save um when you're buying or make when you're selling is gonna make be a huge, it'll be night and day difference than if you just rush through it.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, the amount of stress you would have would be significantly less. Yeah. Significantly less.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

So plan it out, know what you want, talk with us, and uh, we're happy to help you guys out. Yeah. And keep in mind, like it's a slow market. Like if you're a seller right now, you're like four months from like start to sold, you know, if you're lucky right now. So And like I said, that that's an average. That's an average. So sometimes it's faster. Could be, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

So depending on your location, your price range, like all that stuff. So like I said, it's not always four months, but that's uh that that's a good generalization, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Another story. We listed a house and we did two open houses. We were like almost a month on the market, and not one person came through the house, and we were doing everything right. I'm like, this is gonna take a long time at this rate. And we had one buyer go through, wrote an offer, went under contract, and we're closing in like two weeks. So fingers crossed, knock on wood. But it's crazy, like it only takes one person. I've seen that happen a few times. Yep. Where it's like you get one person through there and it's the right one. So it can happen faster, slower. Um, it's a unique market right now. So reach out. We're happy to help you out, and thanks for watching.