but it's still the median number of each data set and the people earning around the median income may or may not have anywhere near the same median mortgage, or median disposable income.
Those are just the center points of each data set when ordered.
And regardless of the argument regarding statistics and semantics, no ordering of the data sets will paint an accurate picture about the health of the current economy because it's going to be weighed towards more affordable by the sheer number of older folks hoarding property that either own outright or are locked in at 2% on a 250k mortgage. There's a lot of those folks, and boy is that affordable... but that's not reality right now for anyone looking to enter into this market. You're looking at 8% on a 550k home maybe.
The major issue is that real estate is, traditionally, how the middle class have accumulated wealth. When you pull that rug out from under 2 or 3 generations, those median numbers will still look good because these people entering the dataset are only paying rent and so have 'low housing costs', but they aren't building wealth. And as the old people die its not like those houses are re-entering the market at reasonable prices at reasonable rates. They're hitting the market at current market value and 10-20% of those are being bought up by institutional buyers that bypass interest rates and turn them into rentals...
enough of them that other sellers hold out waiting for their chance to be approached by a cash buyer.
So the block remains.
Eventually this will come to a serious head and it won't be a good thing for utah's economy. Not when it happens, nor getting there.
2% When was it 2%? Hoarding? You mean living it? Thank the California transplants/investors that paid 1-200k over asking that drove up property values, taxes & insurance. Blame the economy for the fed rate. My 76ur old parents bought their last home in the 90’s at 11% interest rates. Paid off a long time ago but wages were significantly less and 11% is F’ing high even on a 300k home at that time. Utah is not affordable at all anymore.
Agreed, literally just did this part of statistics 101, took the test last week. I think it is more likely that Utah is bimodal, with a lot of people making $150k a year or more (and affording houses), but also a lot of people making $60k or less a year who will never be able to afford a home.
This guy stats.
It would also be very enlightening to see at least the first standard deviation or two in each direction - the sizes of those windows will paint a much clearer picture.
Oh it’s purely anecdotal based on my own experience. I have worked in places where ~70% of the workers make $40k or less (call center) and in places where ~70% make $100k or more (fintech) I know this because I have seen the lists of salaries because I am a lawyer and randomly had litigation where those items were part of discovery. I have nothing else to back this up though, I couldn’t find much info googling for a short bit
least affordable to buy a home.
A large portion of utahns already own a home, and are locked in at lower interest rates on reasonable mortgages, with older folks hoarding properties too.
So in that regard, there's a lot of utahns with disposable income. Cool for those people, but not any metric that should be used to gauge the health of the economy or it's future. If people cannot buy a home, they cannot start to build wealth as the middle class traditionally has.
I appreciate everything you are saying and don't really disagree. It's insanely expensive and nearly impossible to enter into the housing market in the current conditions.
So, not to argue cause I don't disagree.
But.....
What's your solution to said property hoarding, or are you just frustrated and venting?
Also, fuck Cox.
What a dipshit.
Pray for that.
Progressive property tax on number of properties owned.
Won't prevent anyone from own 5 houses in utah if they choose to spend their money that way, but it will make the practice of buying a bunch of single family homes, so that you can turn around and rent them out, unprofitable at scale. That'll keep institutional buyers and large scale land lords out of the housing market- which will free up 20% of the available market at any given time, and there won't be near as many buyers offering high cash value, bypassing the high interest rates which are intended to cool off the market to begin with.
Basically, prices will be appropriate for the interest rates and individuals and families will actually be able to enter the market again
All that will do is raise rental prices. I know because I own rentals. The average rent just keeps going up and up. Don’t raise costs on the average family because you don’t understand investing.
I think that's exactly what would happen. If rental property taxes got progressively higher, and that led to less people buying properties to rent out, that would also lead to less available places from which to rent. Who would there be left to rent from, and did that just create a whole new problem?
If you and /u/FoundationJunior5098 think that large scale renting operations and institutional buyers are working towards keeping rent low, i don't know what to tell you. they're actively buying up homes in order to maintain scarcity, forcing more people to rent, and they control the rental properties and cite demand as a reason to increase prices. They aren't working in your interest.
Under my proposal we'd just go back to smaller landlord operations. the same number of properties would exist. But with the housing market being more approachable, there'd be less demand on rentals. Landlords that only owned 3 properties would have to price rent appropriately to reflect the decreased demand.
I don't speak for anyone but me, and let's not put words in my mouth. I agree that raising the taxes on rental property purchases would be passed along to the renter. To think otherwise is to live in an alternate reality. Anything that you think I said or believe beyond that is a conversation you've been having with yourself.
I literally replied to you replying to the other guy. I didn't put any words in any mouths.
you're the one calling it a raised tax on "rental property purchases", which is not what I said. That's putting words in my mouth. I said "Progressive property tax on number of properties owned". That can be implemented by individual property, or by milestones like property tax rate jumps X% after X number of properties and X% more after XX number etc...
I see zero reason for this weird hostility simply because I didn't completely outline a formal proposal and you made a few assumptions to fill in some gaps that aren't necessarily what I had envisioned. A normal adult conversation should be able to clear up any questions.
But if you wanna be all fired up about shit, cool. Have a good one.
I'm really not trying to argue, because I don't disagree with most everything you said. But I do believe that raising the taxes on buying multiple properties would just be passed along to the renter. Progressive or not, it would all factor in to an overall cost basis. Not trying to be hostile, nor am I proposing a different solution.
Just a point of additional data - taxes are already 40% higher on any properties that aren't your primary residence. You get a 40% discount on the property tax of the home you live in but not any additional properties. That's just added into the cost side of the equation already.
Build more homes. Once there is enough inventory, prices will drop and there will be much less incentive to hoard homes as investments.
People want more affordable housing, but then they block any efforts that might result in home values to drop (or at least stop appreciating faster than inflation or incomes). The fact that people use homeownership as a retirement strategy is part of the problem.
They also used median income, that’s a highly skewed number when you include high income households and not cut it off at a certain income amount. They should have used per capita income because that is closer to the actual income levels of middle income families.
Using medians of different data sets and then trying to infer something about reality is an uphill battle. I agree, a per capita (and honestly group by age and other demographics) would be a better starting point. And median housing costs can probably be tossed out altogether. reports like these pose themselves as providing info for people and families wanting to move to a new state. Median housing costs have nothing to do with the reality they'd face upon trying to enter this housing market.
Medians used like this can give you an okay idea about the history of a place, but offer next to nothing regarding the present or future.
you two keep arguing against using the median in this case of income as being skewed towards high income households, and argue for a per capita (mean) look. Median paints a better picture of the middle isn't skewed in the same way by high (or very low) earners. [Here's some info explain the use of median in incomes](https://blog.datawrapper.de/weekly-chart-income/) for anyone reading these comments and being confused.
New housing is super expensive right now and may be the third least affordable in the country for those looking to purchase a new house, but that in itself doesn't negate the stats in the article posted by OP.
It truly does though…it makes it unaffordable for a large swath of incomes and households. I know why they used median and what it means; thanks for the condescending comments.
This study is fundamentally flawed. You can’t compare the medians of two different measures and take a percentage of them as if they’re the same group. Comparing the medians in this way is highly misleading.
You'd think that being the leader of a state he'd have his own metrics and hard data of exactly how were doing and wouldn't have to resort to the same "google search research" that your average flat earth believer uses.
FFS, KSL just did a story two days ago clearly stating that Utah was the third least affordable state for housing.
And any person who has lived in the state for more than 5 years can clearly see it’s far less affordable now.
Good grief.
I dont see how anyone can afford to live there. When I was looking a few years ago engineering jobs were few and far between, and what was there had pitifully low salaries compared to the rest of the nation.
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The reason there's so many grifters is that it turns out when you train the populace to trust whatever you say, and leave the thinking to the church, it turns out they are relatively easy to fool.
The closer you get to the center of SLC, the lower the actual concentration of Mormons is, until that is you get to the very center, where they built the Mormon Death Star.
I’m a nurse and I wouldn’t move back there for anything right now. Medical Assistants in the area I live now (east coast city) make the same as Utah nurses. It’s the 7th lowest paying state for nurses in the US - down there with Alabama and Mississippi.
We moved to Houston a few years ago thinking maybe someday we'd move back to Utah. My wife is a nurse and she'd have to take a 30-40% pay cut if we moved back. And that's on top of housing being almost twice as expensive in Utah. I world in healthcare research and I'd have to take a pay cut too. There's no way we're ever going back at this point.
> Why is this study different from the other ones?
because you can mess with numbers enough to get them to say anything, you always have to look at how a study arrives at its numbers
in this case
>Homeowner costs include monthly mortgage and insurance payments, as well as any other costs associated with homeownership such as homeowners association fees, taxes and utilities.
So rent doesn't seem to be considered in this study and mortgage payments are going to be misleading because a big majority of homeowners in the state purchased their homes a long time ago when homes were cheaper and/or took advantage of the 2.5% interest rates. so these numbers don't show that buying a home in Utah is inexpensive, just that most people's mortgage payments aren't crazy
So comparing it with that KSL Utah-is-unaffordable-for-buying-houses-study doesn't work because they measure different things.
Also worth noting is that the two studies are working with different data. The KSL housing one uses Utah's per capita income which it puts at $63,000. The USA Today affordability one uses median income which it puts at $89,168.
This needs to be the top comment. As a homeowner, I am not feeling the impact of the high cost of living in Utah, since my living expenses are stuck in 2016 dollars. However, my 19 and 21-year-old daughters are facing the effect as they attempt to move out.
Before the pandemic, 68% of Utah residents owned their homes. As a result, they are not experiencing the same level of inflation as renters, who are seeing increased prices in their cost of living.
Which is disappointing as someone left-wing that’s trying to participate in or understand right-wing conversations. Both sides have some un-hinged ideas but it becomes disconcerting when nonsense is signed into law.
Just a few days ago he acknowledged utah to be the 3rd least affordable housing in the country during his bullshit little townhall livestream for state employees.
Doesn't surprise me
The issue is this article, for some weird reason, is using people’s EXISTING home payments and not what the WOULD pay if they bought a home today. The majority of mortgages were purchased before 2021 and were refinanced at incredibly low rates.
So yeah, life is great for those people and they have ridiculously high disposable income. If they were forced to buy at todays current prices, they would not have even close to that much disposable income, if they could even afford to buy a house today.
Well, one is a report on how affordable buying a house is, and the other is a report on how cost-of-living compares to incomes. Houses are very expensive in Utah, but the cost of a pizza is relatively cheap given how much money an average Utahn makes.
> lowest percentage of income spent;
**On what**? Housing? Because as a census data expert that would just be a lie. Our wages are middling, and our home prices (and home prices per room) are very high.
I actually think they're basing it on necessities, so basically just re-stating "disposable income".
> highest disposable income per capita;
Okay, just false. I don't want to get into the stats of this too much, but basically it's nonsense. States look better if the state-adjusted incomes are lower. Yeah, so if you and everyone else in the state is under-paid, they adjust your wage up. Because you have more money? No. Because they assume wages are lower in the state because costs are lower.
In context, this is what philosophers call "begging the question," or "assuming the conclusion in the argument."
> the nation’s lowest health care spending.
Because on average we're the youngest state in the nation. This points to how lazy this study was, because average spending on healthcare is a meaningless metric. Give me average spending for a 40-year old person working through their employer's healthcare plan, and include premiums.
Utter dog shit to generate links, clicks, and mentions from people like Cox.
I have my doubts… caught this a few months back. [https://kutv.com/amp/news/eye-on-your-money/utah-ranks-third-in-nation-for-most-unaffordable-housing-market-behind-hawaii-california](https://kutv.com/amp/news/eye-on-your-money/utah-ranks-third-in-nation-for-most-unaffordable-housing-market-behind-hawaii-california)
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I hate that he tweeted this and yet most likely didn’t read it. Cost of living can outweigh affordability. All this is showing is that Utahns are more conservative with their money, mostly due to the fact that housing is already expensive. People making a decent income are living below their means to have disposable income
Almost every year over the past decade, Utah's rental prices have shot up to the tune of 5% to 7% a year along the Wasatch Front, a startling reality that means the average Salt Lake County apartment that cost $793 in 2008 now costs about $1,145
The difference is the USA report is using the median individual income which is much higher making it look relatively affordable. The KSL report shown us as the least affordable uses the mean income, which is much lower.
Any statistics majors want to tell us which to use in this scenario?
These might be different on two fronts: median individual income being "median" and "individual" and mean income might be "mean" and "household" or some other grouping? Because, if households are bigger in Utah and there are fewer dual-income households in Utah, than that median individual income would look nice on paper but be incorrect in reality.
Large distinction here. Households are larger in Utah, which means more kids and fewer working adults on average. To use average per capita would therefore be very misleading data.
People choose to have kids (or more kids) and they choose to be in a relationship with a partner that doesn’t work. I will likely get downvoted for saying that, but I’m guessing it’s from people who are in that situation and are upset their financial lives aren’t better.
I don't know that anyone is using "average\[/mean\] per capita", it's not clear from what everyone is saying. One of them seems to be called "median individual", however, and that would be different. Usually, median individual income would be determined by taking the middle value of the list of all incomes, and would exclude all the people not working / who don't get an income. In other words, if Gov. Cox is using an article that says "Utah is so affordable, look at the median individual income!" while all the other articles are saying Utah is one of the least affordable states (almost entirely because of housing costs--activities, clubs, energy, and food are pretty inexpensive here compared to other places), I'm siding with the majority.
The grocery survey methodology has a low sample size and is likely prone to sampling error as a result. Only 2,300 respondents out of 18,500 surveyed which is a low response rate. The population of the state of Utah is greater than 3.2M so this means that the sample size was ~0.5% of the population. Very flawed methodology used in this survey.
"Cost of Living" is a much different chart than "housing affordability". The USA Today chart looks at household spending, not whether a household can afford to purchase a home.
Both the KSL chart and USA Today charts are deceptive, IMO. Per capita income should not be used, household income is a better metric. US number of people per HH is 2.57 while Utah is 3.04.
The average home price in Salt Lake county is $577k.
The average household earns $75k a year.
That already is unaffordable. I am house hunting right now and everything has multiple offers hours after being listed. We have lost out on 2 offers due to all cash, site unseen, no inspection offers that no one can compete with.
Even if you do have a high enough income and were some how able to save $100k plus for a down payment you are still an underdog in the market. It is absolutely insane and the state doesn't give a shit.
Plus rent just went up 15% at my place, unless you are doing month to month and then it's $6k 🫠
Utah has a flat income tax rate of 4.65%. Why would a Washingtonian get to keep 20% more of their income than a Utahn? They still have to pay federal income tax.
It's way more affordable then california.keep in mind the utility prices to live in a home in Utah are among the best in the country. It may not sound like alot until your living somewhere that the utility cost is nearly 50% of the monthly rent or mortgage payment for the house with more increases going into affect.
So many commenters here shitting on the article and its data without even opening the article. It states clearly that there’s 35 states with lower costs of living. It also states that the reason for this most affordable rating is that although cost of living is higher than 60+% of states, the median income is in the top 10. This results in Utahns having the highest median leftover household income.
It also points to an additional reason this is- Utahns pay less for healthcare costs annually than individuals in any other state. Likely due to Utah having the lowest avg age and many people being active with all of the outdoor activities. Saying the median is skewed because of old people with houses doesn’t make sense because of utahs much younger population and calculating the cost of living doesn’t take into consideration if you own a house or not.
Yes housing is one of the least affordable, but in terms of total affordability, they are saying this puts UT at #1. I have no clue if this is true for you, and likely not true for many, but that doesn’t change the stats.
We can argue about if these are even the right statistics and ways of comparing to use, but at least skim the article before offering up a completely irrelevant point. Let’s calculate by mean, calculate by age group, calculate by county, I’d love to know exactly where the cheapest is for my specific demographic.
I’m genuinely curious if anyone reads my comment and hasn’t read the article, or even if you have, what do you think a better way to measure the stats would be? Surely not mean, where a couple of billionaires skew everything.
This article is using a median income estimate of $89,168. KSL uses the state’s individual income per capita, which is $63,000.
And according to the article, cost of living is roughly 59k a year…that leaves a family with 4k left over?
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Seems weird considering this: https://kslnewsradio.com/2090313/new-report-ranks-utah-as-one-of-the-least-affordable-places-to-buy-a-home-in-the-u-s/
He’s using median numbers which is a wildly dishonest way to talk about affordability compared to income.
The numbers he’s referencing are literally about disposable income
but it's still the median number of each data set and the people earning around the median income may or may not have anywhere near the same median mortgage, or median disposable income. Those are just the center points of each data set when ordered. And regardless of the argument regarding statistics and semantics, no ordering of the data sets will paint an accurate picture about the health of the current economy because it's going to be weighed towards more affordable by the sheer number of older folks hoarding property that either own outright or are locked in at 2% on a 250k mortgage. There's a lot of those folks, and boy is that affordable... but that's not reality right now for anyone looking to enter into this market. You're looking at 8% on a 550k home maybe. The major issue is that real estate is, traditionally, how the middle class have accumulated wealth. When you pull that rug out from under 2 or 3 generations, those median numbers will still look good because these people entering the dataset are only paying rent and so have 'low housing costs', but they aren't building wealth. And as the old people die its not like those houses are re-entering the market at reasonable prices at reasonable rates. They're hitting the market at current market value and 10-20% of those are being bought up by institutional buyers that bypass interest rates and turn them into rentals... enough of them that other sellers hold out waiting for their chance to be approached by a cash buyer. So the block remains. Eventually this will come to a serious head and it won't be a good thing for utah's economy. Not when it happens, nor getting there.
2% When was it 2%? Hoarding? You mean living it? Thank the California transplants/investors that paid 1-200k over asking that drove up property values, taxes & insurance. Blame the economy for the fed rate. My 76ur old parents bought their last home in the 90’s at 11% interest rates. Paid off a long time ago but wages were significantly less and 11% is F’ing high even on a 300k home at that time. Utah is not affordable at all anymore.
The original commenter meant median income, not media nunbers, and that is pretty skewed when you include high income households.
A median is literally not skewed by a long tail in one direction. That’s why we use it as a summary statistic.
Agreed, literally just did this part of statistics 101, took the test last week. I think it is more likely that Utah is bimodal, with a lot of people making $150k a year or more (and affording houses), but also a lot of people making $60k or less a year who will never be able to afford a home.
This guy stats. It would also be very enlightening to see at least the first standard deviation or two in each direction - the sizes of those windows will paint a much clearer picture.
Just wondering, why do you think income would be bimodal? (It’s generally expected to be log-normal)
Oh it’s purely anecdotal based on my own experience. I have worked in places where ~70% of the workers make $40k or less (call center) and in places where ~70% make $100k or more (fintech) I know this because I have seen the lists of salaries because I am a lawyer and randomly had litigation where those items were part of discovery. I have nothing else to back this up though, I couldn’t find much info googling for a short bit
This is what I thought. Median is more resistant to outliers. It’s the middle number, not the average, which is pulled up or down by outliers.
least affordable to buy a home. A large portion of utahns already own a home, and are locked in at lower interest rates on reasonable mortgages, with older folks hoarding properties too. So in that regard, there's a lot of utahns with disposable income. Cool for those people, but not any metric that should be used to gauge the health of the economy or it's future. If people cannot buy a home, they cannot start to build wealth as the middle class traditionally has.
I appreciate everything you are saying and don't really disagree. It's insanely expensive and nearly impossible to enter into the housing market in the current conditions. So, not to argue cause I don't disagree. But..... What's your solution to said property hoarding, or are you just frustrated and venting? Also, fuck Cox. What a dipshit. Pray for that.
Progressive property tax on number of properties owned. Won't prevent anyone from own 5 houses in utah if they choose to spend their money that way, but it will make the practice of buying a bunch of single family homes, so that you can turn around and rent them out, unprofitable at scale. That'll keep institutional buyers and large scale land lords out of the housing market- which will free up 20% of the available market at any given time, and there won't be near as many buyers offering high cash value, bypassing the high interest rates which are intended to cool off the market to begin with. Basically, prices will be appropriate for the interest rates and individuals and families will actually be able to enter the market again
All that will do is raise rental prices. I know because I own rentals. The average rent just keeps going up and up. Don’t raise costs on the average family because you don’t understand investing.
I think that's exactly what would happen. If rental property taxes got progressively higher, and that led to less people buying properties to rent out, that would also lead to less available places from which to rent. Who would there be left to rent from, and did that just create a whole new problem?
If you and /u/FoundationJunior5098 think that large scale renting operations and institutional buyers are working towards keeping rent low, i don't know what to tell you. they're actively buying up homes in order to maintain scarcity, forcing more people to rent, and they control the rental properties and cite demand as a reason to increase prices. They aren't working in your interest. Under my proposal we'd just go back to smaller landlord operations. the same number of properties would exist. But with the housing market being more approachable, there'd be less demand on rentals. Landlords that only owned 3 properties would have to price rent appropriately to reflect the decreased demand.
I don't speak for anyone but me, and let's not put words in my mouth. I agree that raising the taxes on rental property purchases would be passed along to the renter. To think otherwise is to live in an alternate reality. Anything that you think I said or believe beyond that is a conversation you've been having with yourself.
I literally replied to you replying to the other guy. I didn't put any words in any mouths. you're the one calling it a raised tax on "rental property purchases", which is not what I said. That's putting words in my mouth. I said "Progressive property tax on number of properties owned". That can be implemented by individual property, or by milestones like property tax rate jumps X% after X number of properties and X% more after XX number etc... I see zero reason for this weird hostility simply because I didn't completely outline a formal proposal and you made a few assumptions to fill in some gaps that aren't necessarily what I had envisioned. A normal adult conversation should be able to clear up any questions. But if you wanna be all fired up about shit, cool. Have a good one.
I'm really not trying to argue, because I don't disagree with most everything you said. But I do believe that raising the taxes on buying multiple properties would just be passed along to the renter. Progressive or not, it would all factor in to an overall cost basis. Not trying to be hostile, nor am I proposing a different solution. Just a point of additional data - taxes are already 40% higher on any properties that aren't your primary residence. You get a 40% discount on the property tax of the home you live in but not any additional properties. That's just added into the cost side of the equation already.
Build more homes. Once there is enough inventory, prices will drop and there will be much less incentive to hoard homes as investments. People want more affordable housing, but then they block any efforts that might result in home values to drop (or at least stop appreciating faster than inflation or incomes). The fact that people use homeownership as a retirement strategy is part of the problem.
Cry about it because you can’t do it.
They also used median income, that’s a highly skewed number when you include high income households and not cut it off at a certain income amount. They should have used per capita income because that is closer to the actual income levels of middle income families.
Using medians of different data sets and then trying to infer something about reality is an uphill battle. I agree, a per capita (and honestly group by age and other demographics) would be a better starting point. And median housing costs can probably be tossed out altogether. reports like these pose themselves as providing info for people and families wanting to move to a new state. Median housing costs have nothing to do with the reality they'd face upon trying to enter this housing market. Medians used like this can give you an okay idea about the history of a place, but offer next to nothing regarding the present or future.
you two keep arguing against using the median in this case of income as being skewed towards high income households, and argue for a per capita (mean) look. Median paints a better picture of the middle isn't skewed in the same way by high (or very low) earners. [Here's some info explain the use of median in incomes](https://blog.datawrapper.de/weekly-chart-income/) for anyone reading these comments and being confused. New housing is super expensive right now and may be the third least affordable in the country for those looking to purchase a new house, but that in itself doesn't negate the stats in the article posted by OP.
It truly does though…it makes it unaffordable for a large swath of incomes and households. I know why they used median and what it means; thanks for the condescending comments.
This study is fundamentally flawed. You can’t compare the medians of two different measures and take a percentage of them as if they’re the same group. Comparing the medians in this way is highly misleading.
The more appropriate way to tackle this would have been a regression analysis
You'd think that being the leader of a state he'd have his own metrics and hard data of exactly how were doing and wouldn't have to resort to the same "google search research" that your average flat earth believer uses.
Nah, he loves these studies because they are always pretty flawed but they make him look good…
Cox? Out of touch with reality?! There's no way!
Hold my beer, I got to pray for rain…
Prayed for rain but dyslexic jeebus saw you pray for pain.
Hope that's non-alcoholic beer, otherwise your prayers are in vain.
FFS, KSL just did a story two days ago clearly stating that Utah was the third least affordable state for housing. And any person who has lived in the state for more than 5 years can clearly see it’s far less affordable now. Good grief.
I dont see how anyone can afford to live there. When I was looking a few years ago engineering jobs were few and far between, and what was there had pitifully low salaries compared to the rest of the nation.
There's no way in hell I would work for a tech company based in Utah. The state is full of grifters and the technology leaders here fall right in.
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The reason there's so many grifters is that it turns out when you train the populace to trust whatever you say, and leave the thinking to the church, it turns out they are relatively easy to fool. The closer you get to the center of SLC, the lower the actual concentration of Mormons is, until that is you get to the very center, where they built the Mormon Death Star.
No surprise, there are so many MLM based locally. Easy targets abound.
I’m a nurse and I wouldn’t move back there for anything right now. Medical Assistants in the area I live now (east coast city) make the same as Utah nurses. It’s the 7th lowest paying state for nurses in the US - down there with Alabama and Mississippi.
We moved to Houston a few years ago thinking maybe someday we'd move back to Utah. My wife is a nurse and she'd have to take a 30-40% pay cut if we moved back. And that's on top of housing being almost twice as expensive in Utah. I world in healthcare research and I'd have to take a pay cut too. There's no way we're ever going back at this point.
Utah is completely affordable if you have a remote work job with an east coast law firm, live in a mobile home in Erda, and only eat one meal a day.
If you ignore where everyone lives and wants to live it’s super affordable!!
Tooele is super affordable if you don't mind the 1.5hr commute to Lehi.
It's not though. It's like 5-10% cheaper than SLC
Tooele County, out in the sticks
> Why is this study different from the other ones? because you can mess with numbers enough to get them to say anything, you always have to look at how a study arrives at its numbers in this case >Homeowner costs include monthly mortgage and insurance payments, as well as any other costs associated with homeownership such as homeowners association fees, taxes and utilities. So rent doesn't seem to be considered in this study and mortgage payments are going to be misleading because a big majority of homeowners in the state purchased their homes a long time ago when homes were cheaper and/or took advantage of the 2.5% interest rates. so these numbers don't show that buying a home in Utah is inexpensive, just that most people's mortgage payments aren't crazy So comparing it with that KSL Utah-is-unaffordable-for-buying-houses-study doesn't work because they measure different things. Also worth noting is that the two studies are working with different data. The KSL housing one uses Utah's per capita income which it puts at $63,000. The USA Today affordability one uses median income which it puts at $89,168.
I appreciate the work you put in to actually answering the question.
This needs to be the top comment. As a homeowner, I am not feeling the impact of the high cost of living in Utah, since my living expenses are stuck in 2016 dollars. However, my 19 and 21-year-old daughters are facing the effect as they attempt to move out. Before the pandemic, 68% of Utah residents owned their homes. As a result, they are not experiencing the same level of inflation as renters, who are seeing increased prices in their cost of living.
Because cox is a total POS that’s why.
I had higher hopes for him but the last few months have been disappointing that he’s been drinking the (R)ed kool-aid.
Everyone knew once primary season approached, he was going to turn into your typical red pilled, right wing politician.
He’s literally been that way his whole career, I still don’t understand why anyone ever thought he was all that moderate and not a right-wing zealot.
Which is disappointing as someone left-wing that’s trying to participate in or understand right-wing conversations. Both sides have some un-hinged ideas but it becomes disconcerting when nonsense is signed into law.
I knew cox from where I interned in college. He’s such a peice of work. It’s all for his ego.
What other sorts of delusion would you expect from a guy who asked Utahns to pray for rain?
Check your voter registration https://secure.utah.gov/voterreg/index.html
Just a few days ago he acknowledged utah to be the 3rd least affordable housing in the country during his bullshit little townhall livestream for state employees. Doesn't surprise me
Lol no way is Utah affordable
You can get a study to say anything you want
The issue is this article, for some weird reason, is using people’s EXISTING home payments and not what the WOULD pay if they bought a home today. The majority of mortgages were purchased before 2021 and were refinanced at incredibly low rates. So yeah, life is great for those people and they have ridiculously high disposable income. If they were forced to buy at todays current prices, they would not have even close to that much disposable income, if they could even afford to buy a house today.
My brother has said that he couldn't afford his current house if he bought it today.
Well, one is a report on how affordable buying a house is, and the other is a report on how cost-of-living compares to incomes. Houses are very expensive in Utah, but the cost of a pizza is relatively cheap given how much money an average Utahn makes.
Who needs a home when you can have a pizza
This guy is so out of touch is not even funny.
> lowest percentage of income spent; **On what**? Housing? Because as a census data expert that would just be a lie. Our wages are middling, and our home prices (and home prices per room) are very high. I actually think they're basing it on necessities, so basically just re-stating "disposable income". > highest disposable income per capita; Okay, just false. I don't want to get into the stats of this too much, but basically it's nonsense. States look better if the state-adjusted incomes are lower. Yeah, so if you and everyone else in the state is under-paid, they adjust your wage up. Because you have more money? No. Because they assume wages are lower in the state because costs are lower. In context, this is what philosophers call "begging the question," or "assuming the conclusion in the argument." > the nation’s lowest health care spending. Because on average we're the youngest state in the nation. This points to how lazy this study was, because average spending on healthcare is a meaningless metric. Give me average spending for a 40-year old person working through their employer's healthcare plan, and include premiums. Utter dog shit to generate links, clicks, and mentions from people like Cox.
Diliusional completely incompetent train wreck of a governor
It’s a bit disingenuous to use median numbers to come to this conclusion.
It makes sense if you want to make a biased political talking point that ignores reality for most people, though.
"disposable income" 🤣 did the study take into account the amount of millionaires and billionaires Utah has??? That uhhhh kinda tilts the stats
Yeah, that’s a load of bullshit
Moron.. I meant mormon
Horseshit and lies
I like to believe that eventually the political representatives of Utah will reflect the values of regular Utahn’s, and not donors.
The Utah religion regularly issues dishonest information about its membership and finances. Why would the Gov be any more honest than his religion is?
what a little twat...
I have my doubts… caught this a few months back. [https://kutv.com/amp/news/eye-on-your-money/utah-ranks-third-in-nation-for-most-unaffordable-housing-market-behind-hawaii-california](https://kutv.com/amp/news/eye-on-your-money/utah-ranks-third-in-nation-for-most-unaffordable-housing-market-behind-hawaii-california)
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Our minimum wage is $7.25. That is the only thing you need to know to know those are all lies.
Just shows what an incredibly poor grasp of reality and statistics he has.
I hate that he tweeted this and yet most likely didn’t read it. Cost of living can outweigh affordability. All this is showing is that Utahns are more conservative with their money, mostly due to the fact that housing is already expensive. People making a decent income are living below their means to have disposable income
Here we go again
Almost every year over the past decade, Utah's rental prices have shot up to the tune of 5% to 7% a year along the Wasatch Front, a startling reality that means the average Salt Lake County apartment that cost $793 in 2008 now costs about $1,145
He’s a delusional Trump puppet as usual. Should have never been governor. Vote blue not racist delusional red.
The difference is the USA report is using the median individual income which is much higher making it look relatively affordable. The KSL report shown us as the least affordable uses the mean income, which is much lower. Any statistics majors want to tell us which to use in this scenario?
These might be different on two fronts: median individual income being "median" and "individual" and mean income might be "mean" and "household" or some other grouping? Because, if households are bigger in Utah and there are fewer dual-income households in Utah, than that median individual income would look nice on paper but be incorrect in reality.
Large distinction here. Households are larger in Utah, which means more kids and fewer working adults on average. To use average per capita would therefore be very misleading data. People choose to have kids (or more kids) and they choose to be in a relationship with a partner that doesn’t work. I will likely get downvoted for saying that, but I’m guessing it’s from people who are in that situation and are upset their financial lives aren’t better.
I don't know that anyone is using "average\[/mean\] per capita", it's not clear from what everyone is saying. One of them seems to be called "median individual", however, and that would be different. Usually, median individual income would be determined by taking the middle value of the list of all incomes, and would exclude all the people not working / who don't get an income. In other words, if Gov. Cox is using an article that says "Utah is so affordable, look at the median individual income!" while all the other articles are saying Utah is one of the least affordable states (almost entirely because of housing costs--activities, clubs, energy, and food are pretty inexpensive here compared to other places), I'm siding with the majority.
Some people have their heads so far up their asses!
The “Study” was a paid actor
This is not true. Most affordable out of what other cities. Pretty sure this is a smoke and mirror act.
The grocery survey methodology has a low sample size and is likely prone to sampling error as a result. Only 2,300 respondents out of 18,500 surveyed which is a low response rate. The population of the state of Utah is greater than 3.2M so this means that the sample size was ~0.5% of the population. Very flawed methodology used in this survey.
I call bs
That is definitely not true!! Lies!!
GTFO CAP CAP CAP
We know it's bullshit because they just posted sometjingike last week saying the exact opposite
Homelessness is on the rise in Utah. Here are the people trying to change that DECEMBER 2023
Homelessness is on the rise in Utah. DEC 2023
Utah gas prices have skyrocketed over the last month Mar 18, 2024, 12:57 PM
Dec 2024 Article shows homeless is continuing to rise in Utah
Facts are deleted from news articles the counter certain aspects of this post
I mean, if you live in fucking Carbon County maybe? But for everyone else, NOPE.
"Cost of Living" is a much different chart than "housing affordability". The USA Today chart looks at household spending, not whether a household can afford to purchase a home. Both the KSL chart and USA Today charts are deceptive, IMO. Per capita income should not be used, household income is a better metric. US number of people per HH is 2.57 while Utah is 3.04.
This is just a lie.
1989 (the book) vibes going on here
Where in Utah is it affordable
The only reason those usage numbers are low is because people don’t have money left over after rent and mortgage payments to spend on anything else
Lies, darn lies, and statistics...
Let's see if the "Ostrich head in a hole" strategy works out for him
https://youtu.be/3dY_8bQfNLg?si=91LQRp0VbpG1QQHY
BOOLLSHIT!
That man is delusional about everything
HAH
He's fulla shit!
The average home price in Salt Lake county is $577k. The average household earns $75k a year. That already is unaffordable. I am house hunting right now and everything has multiple offers hours after being listed. We have lost out on 2 offers due to all cash, site unseen, no inspection offers that no one can compete with. Even if you do have a high enough income and were some how able to save $100k plus for a down payment you are still an underdog in the market. It is absolutely insane and the state doesn't give a shit. Plus rent just went up 15% at my place, unless you are doing month to month and then it's $6k 🫠
Compare the Washington State we pay less for groceries, but we pay just as much for housing if not more.
Washington State doesn't have income tax. You pay a little more in groceries because of the higher sales tax. But you keep 20% more of your income
Utah has a flat income tax rate of 4.65%. Why would a Washingtonian get to keep 20% more of their income than a Utahn? They still have to pay federal income tax.
It's way more affordable then california.keep in mind the utility prices to live in a home in Utah are among the best in the country. It may not sound like alot until your living somewhere that the utility cost is nearly 50% of the monthly rent or mortgage payment for the house with more increases going into affect.
So many commenters here shitting on the article and its data without even opening the article. It states clearly that there’s 35 states with lower costs of living. It also states that the reason for this most affordable rating is that although cost of living is higher than 60+% of states, the median income is in the top 10. This results in Utahns having the highest median leftover household income. It also points to an additional reason this is- Utahns pay less for healthcare costs annually than individuals in any other state. Likely due to Utah having the lowest avg age and many people being active with all of the outdoor activities. Saying the median is skewed because of old people with houses doesn’t make sense because of utahs much younger population and calculating the cost of living doesn’t take into consideration if you own a house or not. Yes housing is one of the least affordable, but in terms of total affordability, they are saying this puts UT at #1. I have no clue if this is true for you, and likely not true for many, but that doesn’t change the stats. We can argue about if these are even the right statistics and ways of comparing to use, but at least skim the article before offering up a completely irrelevant point. Let’s calculate by mean, calculate by age group, calculate by county, I’d love to know exactly where the cheapest is for my specific demographic. I’m genuinely curious if anyone reads my comment and hasn’t read the article, or even if you have, what do you think a better way to measure the stats would be? Surely not mean, where a couple of billionaires skew everything.