The latest pulse reading on Utah's housing market is out — and it shows home ownership remains out of reach for many Utahns, especially first-time homebuyers.
Despite some slight fluctuations in early 2026, Utah is still among the nation's top 10 most expensive states for single-family homes with a median price of $559,900.
Utah's median sale price across all housing types increased from $500,000 in the first quarter of 2025 to $520,000 in the first quarter of 2026 — requiring an annual income of nearly $150,000 to buy, according to a new report released Wednesday by University of Utah housing researchers.
While many current homeowners are incentivized to stay locked into their current mortgages with low pandemic-era interest rates and are gaining wealth through equity — first-time homebuyers have it much harder.
The estimated monthly payment on a median-priced home hit a high of $3,725 in 2025 before dipping slightly to $3,669 in early 2026 — but that's still more than $1,200 above monthly payments in 2021.
A vast majority of Utah renters — a striking 91% — can't afford that mortgage payment. And less than 5% of homes sold last year were affordable to renters earning the median salary of $64,000.
As mortgage rates remain elevated and aren't expected to budge any time soon, researchers predict Utah's tight housing market and its affordability problems will continue to persist — and if nothing changes, get worse.
The state's population is expected to balloon to more than 4 million in 2035, which researchers say will require an additional 280,000 housing units. Of those, about 61,500 will need to be for new owners and renters aged 35 and younger, 120,000 for those aged 35 to 64, and about 98,000 for those 65 and older.
"While the path to homeownership appears bleak for many potential first-time buyers, opportunities exist with the right housing options," the report says.
The report's authors, Dejan Eskic and Moira Dillow with the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, discussed their findings during a panel discussion at the Thomas S. Monson Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday.
They and other panelists including Steve Waldrip, senior housing adviser for Gov. Spencer Cox, Springville City Administrator Troy Fitzgerald and Steven Bond, founder and CEO of the nonprofit HomeOwnership4U discussed the report's warnings and what should be done to solve Utah's stubborn housing crisis.
They agreed that there's an appetite for smaller single-family homes on smaller lots — rather than homes with huge footprints. Utah is among states with the largest homes for sale in the country, with an average of more than 2,400 square feet, the Deseret News recently reported.
Utah's household size is shrinking, Dillow said, projected to go from about 2.9 persons per household today to about 2.6 in the next 10 years.
"What this really means is that even with the same population growth, a decrease in household size increases housing demand in the next decade by 11%," she said. "Smaller homes are OK because our household size is shrinking as we age. And those are both new words for Utah."
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Eskic, also the chief economist for the Salt Lake Board of Realtors, and Bond said Utah's average home square footage is high compared to other states.
"We're the largest by square footage per home by a large degree," Bond said. "We've built big homes since we've had big families. But we now have a strain on household size, and it's time to think about … smaller homes on smaller footprints to make it more attainable."
The Utah Legislature in recent years has moved to create more tools cities can use to incentivize developers to build smaller "starter homes," stopping short of sweeping mandates.
But Fitzgerald said as Springville has made zoning changes and tried to encourage developers to build smaller homes, they haven't bit. He said Springville has more than 2,000 lots available for development now with lot sizes that are 3,000 square feet or less, but "very few of them are coming out of the ground."
"They don't want them," Fitzgerald said of developers. "We've approved a zoning code that requires smaller houses on these smaller lots. Every single builder is coming back and asking our council to change them and increase the size of the home … presumably because that's what the market is asking for. And that's an incredible problem."
When looking at the numbers included in the housing report released Wednesday, Waldrip said it's "hard not to be a little bit depressed."
"I'm sitting here going, 'What have I been doing for the last couple of years?'" he said.
The bottom line, he said, is "we need a lot of homes," even as Utah faces "land constraints" in between the Great Salt Lake and the mountains.
"So (we need) smaller homes on smaller lots," he said.
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