Utah Continues to Avoid National Real Estate Bust

Real life lessons in real estate bubblenomics

By Curmudgeon

The front page top story in the Standard-Examiner today is this:

Stability seen in Utah homes
Foreclosure rates up, but still far below average for country
By JORDAN MUHLESTEIN

Utah’s foreclosure rate is slightly higher than a year ago, but far lower than the national average. Statewide, the percentage of loans in foreclosure was 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, up from 0.61 percent a year earlier, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Thursday. The Utah rate was less than half the nationwide rate, which rose from 1.19 percent in 2006 to 2.04 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Nationally, more than one of every 20 home mortgages was delinquent during the last three months of 2007, the highest level in 23 years.

The rest of the story can be found here.

Utah has [so far] dodged the real estate crash and chaos that has engulfed much of the rest of the nation because Utah also dodged the real estate boom [aka "bubble"] of recent years. Wasn't it just a short while ago that advocates of the gondola/gondola and park sale for real estate development scheme were explaining to the rest of us ignorant peasants that Ogden had missed out on all the prosperity, and that building the gondola/gondola and turning the golf course into Mr. Peterson's vacation villas would trigger the same kind of real estate boom in prices they were seeing in Las Vegas and Arizona and California and Florida? That we too could become rich practically overnight by building the gondola/gondola and triggering a real estate boom here? Just months ago, wasn't it?

Wonder if Godfrey, Geiger & Gang will be making the same argument anytime soon....