It’s time for my February Market Heartbeat. Watch the video above or read the text below.

Today we’ll take a look at the current Salt Lake Real Estate Market and what that means for homebuyers and sellers. As of today, if you have been on the fence about selling your home – stop waiting! Right now is a great time to sell your home.

According the Wasatch Front Regional MLS there is currently about 3 months of inventory on the market. That means it’s a seller’s market. We see increasing prices and multiple offers on new listings. And from the same source as of today there are 1,746 active homes for sale in Salt Lake County and 2,100 under contract. It is pretty rare to have more houses under contract than available.

Those under contract houses were on the market for a median 15 days – across all price ranges. That’s amazing for the middle of winter. This means houses are selling. There are active, serious buyers out there. It also means that it is very difficult for those buyers to find houses right now. There isn’t much to choose from so when a good, well-priced house comes up, it sells quickly. That’s why it’s a great time to put your house on the market if you’ve been waiting.

Two weeks ago the Salt Lake Board of Realtors hosted the annual Housing Forecast Breakfast. One of the speakers was James Wood he is an Ivory-Boyer Senior Fellow, at the Kem C. Garder Policy Institute at the University of Utah. He’s an economist. He had a positive outlook on the next year. He expects home prices to continue to increase, but not as quickly as last year. He expects a 3-5% increase. Part of this is because he believes more homeowners will cash out some of their increased home equity causing the housing supply to be less tight than last year. He also believes increasing mortgage interest rates will help to slow the pricing increases. Below I will attach a copy of his report and a link to the site where you can watch the presentations of both him and the National Association of Realtors chief economist Lawrence Yun if you’d like. I think they are very interesting, but then, I’m a giant real estate nerd.

That’s all I’ve got for this month’s update. Again, if you’re not sure if the timing is right on selling your house, give me a call. We can do a market analysis for your specific home so you’ll know right where you stand.