Gold Medallion Homes in the News

Gold Medallion Homes co-president Kristin Nilssen is filling two roles this year. In addition to her duties at Gold Medallion, she is also serving as President of the Salt Lake Home Builders Association.

Kristin was recently asked about the pricing of new homes in Salt Lake by KUTV News. Here are some excerpts.

According to a newly released report, just 21 percent of new homes sold in the region sold for under $200,000. In 2002, 70 percent sold for less.

“It's still a good market,” said Kristen Nilssen of the Salt Lake Home Builder’s Association. “Anything under 200, if it's decent at all, sometimes will be gone within hours.”

There are a few reasons the cost of housing has risen dramatically. The cost of building materials is more expensive now, along with labor expenses. But the biggest factor is the land along the Wasatch front.

There is only so much room to build new homes, with mountains on three sides of the Salt Lake Valley and the Great Salt Lake to the north. Because of the limited area, the cost of land is more valuable. Compare the amount of land available to home builders now compared to that of 15-years ago, when many current-day developments were nothing but empty lots.

“We predict a very strong housing market for our economy over the next 12 months,” Nilssen said.

South Mountain Homes - Searching Can Be Tricky

In the foothills of Draper are a number of communities that have been developed over the years. While there are many different subdivisions present, people generally consider this area to be South Mountain. At the top of these foothills are several new developments including SunCrest, EagleCrest and Eagle Summit.

This area of the valley is a crossroads. Driving from one side to the other will take you through two counties and three municipalities. This is causing havoc for our real estate listings! You see, at our SunCrest community, we have four homes for sale, but only one shows up on the consumer version of the Multiple Listing Service. We have three others for sale just a few blocks away. Even though they're in the same zip code, they're in different counties, so the online search doesn't show up.

The MLS real estate agents use gives a little more flexibility, but we still have similar problems getting all our houses to show up. Fortunately, we've realized this problem and can now get the news out in different ways. In the coming days, we'll be putting up all our South Mountain new homes for sale on this blog. Meanwhile, you can see what we have for sale on our main website.

Obviously our current offerings may not suit everyone's tastes. So, take a drive out to the South Mountain area and take a look at what's for sale. Take note of the property's address so you can ask your real estate agent for the details later. If you're not working with an agent, most houses for sale have contact information on them.

If you're looking for houses in the South Mountain area, you may want to keep going a bit and look at what Gold Medallion has available in Traverse Mountain and Thanksgiving Village.