Utah has a target to build more starter homes : NPR
A new development of Nilson houses in Plain City, UTAH, includes smaller start -up houses with larger houses at the market rate.
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Jennifer Ludden/NPR
Plain City, Utah – Miranda and Cole Potokar, who are 23 years old, have spoken a lot with friends of their terrible timing on the housing market.
“We would make jokes like:” What was I doing in the third year? I should have bought a house instead of learning, you know, multiplication! “” Said Miranda.
The young couple became major in the north of Utah while the prices of housing in a large part of the country have progressed regularly, then suddenly. Utah is now one of the most expensive markets. Which is fueled by an increasing demand for family sizes that are larger than those elsewhere in the United States, more more people Move in the state.
Miranda and Cole Potokar lived in the basements of her grandparents for two years to avoid high rents and save for a deposit.
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After getting married two years ago, the potokars decided to live in the basement of Miranda grandparents to save for a deposit. But when they started watching about a year ago, they were shocked. Even older places had high prices and things sold so quickly.
“Wake up the next morning, it was gone,” said Cole, slamming your fingers. “The market would be so aggressive.”
So they decided to give up for a while.
The median age of American house buyers for the first time at 38 years old, a record
People like the potokars are exactly that the governor of Utah Spencer Cox had in mind when he set an ambitious goal about a year and a half ago: to build 35,000 starting houses at a lower cost in five years.
“The American dream of home ownership is slowly but surely far from too much, out of the reach of our children and grandchildren,” the Republican governor told dozens of mayors at a housing summit in May.
The median prices of American houses are at a recordRighing up almost 50% in the past five years. In Utah, they are even more than the national average, on half a million dollars.
The underlying driver is a massive shortage of houses. Add to this inflation and high interest rates, and mortgages are out of reach for many. The median age of house buyers struck us Record of 38Against 31 the decade before.
To encourage developers to build more places that people can afford, Utah legislators approved last year Low interest construction loans For start -up houses. This year, they extended the program to include start -up condos. These incentives have followed a series of other laws in recent years intended to encourage all kinds of Dense, cheaper accommodation.
But so far, the manufacturers have been slow to connect. At the summit of May, Governor Cox told mayors that only about 5,100 start -up houses had been built or started.
“We are on the way, but we must desperately do more. And we have to move faster,” he said.
Utah has not made any more daring changes than housing experts say they are necessary
Utah Spencer Cox Governor speaks to journalists on March 7 in Salt Lake City. He made affordable housing a signature problem, saying that the prices that ar fell are “the greatest threat to the prosperity of our state”.
Hannah Schoenbaum / AP
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Hannah Schoenbaum / AP
COX has made affordable housing a signature problem and raised it several times when appearing in the state.
He called on the manufacturers to help fill this important gap on the market, even if, he says: “You could be able to make more money Do something else. “He implored local leaders to approve the start-up domestic projects, despite an animated decline that they could face residents worried about changes in their neighborhood. And for Utahns in general, Cox urged them to think about where future generations will be able to live, ask”, are we going to be the selfish generation? “”
“He says in a way:” We all have to make borders here. “But I have not seen concrete measures that would really move the needle right now,” said Andra Ghent, a finance professor at the University of Utah.
She and other housing experts Let’s say that the best way to create smaller and affordable houses is to modify zoning laws and authorize smaller lot. An increasing number of states – including Texas, more recently – intervened and did this, making the controversial decision to preempt local laws. The Governor of Utah proposed it, but the legislators said no.
“Many state municipalities have minimum prize size sizes,” said Ghent. “It’s huge as a large size. … If the developers are stuck with this minimum size size, they will build luxury houses.”
Give buyers of the first time a chance in Utah
Jed Nilson stands in front of a start -up house in the new development of his business in Plain City, Utah.
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The absence of a change in scanning zoning did not prevent a developer north of Salt Lake City from taking up the governor’s challenge.
Jed Nilson is sitting on the porch of a brand new house while the construction trucks rumble by his latest project in Plain City. He directs Nilson housesFounded by his father in 1977. But he started as a real estate agent 26 years ago when he was at university.
“And other children who go to university would come to buy me new houses,” he said, laughing. “Because they had a job and they went to university and they could afford a house.”
Today, Nilson finds disturbing that even couples who both have a university degree and careers cannot afford to buy one. “It’s not durable,” he said.
Nilson has long been on a mission to find different products or methods that reduce costs but not quality. In fact, its ultimate mission is ultimately to create a house which is again affordable on a Single income.
When the governor announced his goal of starting at home, said Nilson, many developers were skeptical. But he saw an opportunity. With the help of the state, he concluded an agreement with the county of Weber which allowed him to add more houses to this development of City Plain and put them on smaller plots which would be normally open.
Nilson walks in the street to show the first 12 start houses finished. They are sitting right next to larger market rates, a colorful mixture of farm, craftsman and modern mountains.
There is a long waiting list for start -up houses in the development of Nilson, which, according to him, is “scandalously unusual”.
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“We intentionally wanted to show that we could put these start-up houses at the entrance of a community with a thousand houses because it is a beautiful architecture,” he said.
And how much do they cost in this expensive market? Governor Cox talks about wanting starting houses for less than $ 400,000. Nilson sells its three -bedroom model for a little less, and a smaller two bedrooms for around $ 370,000.
Nilson knows that it may not seem affordable for some, but another state program To help the first buyers cost a ceiling of $ 450,000. “I mean, five years ago, $ 450,000 was a house at high prices in this area, and now we call it a start-up house,” he said.
For its houses in the city, priority is given to buyers, teachers, first stakeholders and members of the active military service. Houses must also be occupied by the owner for a decade. The company has a long waiting list which, according to Nilson, is “scandalously unusual”.
Miranda and Cole Potokar in the living room of their new house. The prices of the houses were so out of reach that the couple had stopped looking until they hear about the nearby start -up houses.
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Last spring, buyers for the first time Miranda and Cole Potokar were among the first to move.
“This is our little dining area, which is massive,” says Miranda, while the couple visits their house of 1,400 square feet on two floors.
“One thing that really attracted us to this house was, like the windows,” said Cole. There are big ones who let in a lot of light. There is also space to work at home and a third room so that they can start having children here.
They like to make morning walks and say that they have met some neighbors their age. Potokars say they feel extremely lucky.
“It’s like a basis not only for our family, but also … to prepare for the future,” explains Cole. “And in many ways that, as, we don’t even know.”
Nilson has 260 additional start -up houses in the pipeline here and hopes that his experience will encourage more developers to intensify.
“Maybe I will make less money per house, but I can build more houses. And I will solve a societal problem,” he said. “I mean, a company cannot work when there is no room at the bottom for people to start their upward mobility.”
