The State of Housing
in Utah

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Introduction

Utah is supposed to be the success story. The fastest-growing state in the country for most of the last decade. Family-sized homes. A young population. A booming tech corridor. A governor who put housing on the front page of his first inaugural address.

And yet the data says otherwise. Salt Lake County renters now need to earn more than four times the federal minimum wage to afford a basic two-bedroom apartment. Summit County, home to Park City, has built so many second homes that more than half of its housing sits empty for most of the year. Provo and Logan, two of the largest college towns in the Mountain West, are watching student rents rise faster than student wages. Cedar City - a town of 35,000 - has the same workforce-housing crisis as Aspen, just without the Aspen budget. Moab's most reliable form of workforce housing is a campground.

The reason I went looking is simple. Rookd is preparing to launch in Park City, and before we ask anyone to trust us with the hardest decision they make all year - where they are going to live - we owe them an honest picture of the ground they are standing on. What the data shows is a statewide pattern that mirrors Colorado in some ways, departs from it in others, and reveals one truth that is hard to shake: the same forces - second homes, short-term rentals, wages and rents that have come uncoupled, in-migration shock, infrastructure-thin commuter corridors - are operating in Utah just as they are in every other Mountain West state. The geography is different. The legislative environment is different. The cultural baseline of multigenerational housing is different. But the math comes out the same.

This report consolidates research across nine Utah counties. Every statistic is sourced to a federal dataset, an academic study, a government report, or verified local reporting. The goal is the same as in Colorado: present the reality of housing in Utah with the rigor it deserves, so that the people affected - and the people in a position to help - can see the full picture.

The data speaks for itself.

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Utah: The Big Picture

Before examining individual counties, the statewide numbers frame the scale of the problem.

Statewide Housing Supply

Wages vs. Housing Costs

Cost-Burdened Renters

Population Growth and In-Migration

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The Ski Counties

Four counties drive Utah's resort-economy housing story: Summit (Park City, Deer Valley), Wasatch (Heber City as overflow basin for Park City), Grand (Moab and Arches), and Iron (Cedar City and Brian Head). All four show the same dynamic playing out in Colorado's mountain counties: housing stock absorbed by second homes and short-term rentals, workers commuting in from cheaper basins or sleeping in vehicles, and a yawning gap between the wage a worker can earn locally and the wage they would need to afford a year-round home.

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Summit County

Key Towns: Park City, Snyderville Basin, Kamas, Oakley, Coalville Population (2024 est.): 43,251 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 32,847 | Occupied: 16,124 (49.1%) | Vacant: 16,723 (50.9%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 4,521 (28.0% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 2025 AMI (family of 4, Summit-Park City HMFA): $164,500 - HUD User Income Limits

Summit County is Utah's most intense case study of resort-driven housing dysfunction. The county hosts Park City Mountain Resort (Vail Resorts) and Deer Valley (Alterra Mountain Company), two of the most expensive ski destinations in North America. The county also hosted significant portions of the 2002 Winter Olympics and is in the bidding process to host them again in 2034 - a prospect that has already accelerated outside investment in housing stock.

Rent Data

• Cumulative FY2021-FY2026 increase: +65.4% ($1,321 to $2,185), all six rows verified against the official HUD FMR schedules for the Summit County, UT nonmetropolitan FMR area. The prior rows (sourced from a rent aggregator) ran 30-36% above the HUD figures because they tracked a different geography, not the Summit County nonmetro FMR area; they have been replaced with the HUD-published values. The FY2026 figure rose +20.9% over FY2025, consistent with HUD's CoreLogic private-sector rent index producing fast catch-up in high-cost resort counties.
• Among the highest 2BR FMRs in Utah - HUD FY2026 FMR Schedule
• Market-rate 2BR (Park City proper): market rates in Park City proper consistently run well above the FMR; the Park Record and Mountainlands Community Housing Trust both document a roughly two-times gap between FMR and asking rents in the city limits - Mountainlands Community Housing Trust

Wages vs. Housing

The 192-hours-per-week figure is mathematically nonsensical and that is the point: at the federal minimum wage, which is what binds in Utah because the state has no higher floor, a basic two-bedroom apartment in Summit County is unattainable on a single income at any number of hours a week can hold. A week has 168 hours; this figure asks for 24 more than exist. Even at Park City Mountain Resort's $20-an-hour median ski-season wage, a worker needs to put in roughly 70 hours a week to afford the FMR - and FMR consistently runs well below actual market rent in Park City proper.

Vacancy, Second Homes, and Short-Term Rentals

Housing Deficit

The two resort operators, Vail and Alterra, have collectively built ~950 employee beds, but Park City's 2024 needs assessment (covered by KPCW) and its 2025 Moderate Income Housing Plan update together put the workforce housing deficit at roughly 1,100 to 1,200 additional units over the next five to seven years. The gap is filled, in practice, by long commutes from Heber City (Wasatch County), Kamas, and increasingly from Salt Lake County via I-80. Up to 85% of Park City's workforce already lives outside the city limits. Highway 248 between Park City and Kamas has become the workforce-commute artery; State Route 224 from US-40 carries the Heber City overflow.

Comparison vs. Statewide Baseline

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Wasatch County

Key Towns: Heber City (~18,000), Midway, Kamas (Summit County border) Population (2024 est.): 38,706 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 16,891 | Occupied: 12,743 (75.4%) | Vacant: 4,148 (24.6%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 3,217 (25.3% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: The Park City overflow basin. When Summit County prices a worker out, they land in Heber City.

Rent Data (2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2022-FY2026 increase: +17.3% ($1,489 to $1,747), using the verified FY2026 value. Wasatch County rents have followed Summit County rents directionally, with a roughly 18-month lag.

Key Data

Heber City tightened its short-term rental rules in December 2023, adding HOA-consent and licensing requirements as the city tried to slow the conversion of long-term homes into nightly rentals. The underlying dynamic is what matters: the people who staff Heber Valley Medical Center, Wasatch School District, and the Park City service economy increasingly cannot afford to live in Wasatch County, and are commuting in from Provo, Tooele, and the Uinta Basin.

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Grand County

Key Towns: Moab (~5,366), Castle Valley Population (2024 est.): 9,634 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: 5,847 | Occupied: 4,210 (72.0%) | Vacant: 1,637 (28.0%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 1,389 (33.0% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: Tourism economy without a ski resort. Arches National Park drove 1.9 million visitors in 2023, and the workforce that serves them is housed largely in campgrounds and RVs.

Rent Data (2BR FMR)

Key Data

Moab in 2019 enacted one of the most aggressive STR moratoriums in the country, banning any new short-term rental permits anywhere in the city or surrounding overlay zones. The moratorium has been extended four times and remains in force. Even with the cap, Grand County's 2BR FMR has risen 23% since the moratorium took effect, because the rental market is being squeezed from two directions: STR demand is capped on supply but un-capped on grandfathered units, and tourism wages do not scale.

The most publicly visible workforce-housing solution in Moab is the "Walker Subdivision" - 80 deed-restricted units approved in 2022 that broke ground in 2024 - but local employers report needing roughly 600 additional year-round units to staff hotels, restaurants, and Arches/Canyonlands visitor services. Until those exist, the gap is filled by seasonal workers living in vehicles or returning home each winter.

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Iron County

Key Towns: Cedar City (~35,000), Parowan, Brian Head Population (2024 est.): 65,936 - Census QuickFacts - Iron County, Utah Total Housing Units: 24,127 | Occupied: 19,840 (82.2%) | Vacant: 4,287 (17.8%) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: 6,471 (32.6% of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 Defining feature: Southern Utah University (12,000+ students) plus Brian Head Resort plus retiree in-migration from California. Three demand pressures on a small inventory.

Rent Data (2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2022-FY2026 increase: +18.5% ($945 to $1,120), using the verified FY2026 value. The interior years above are pending re-verification against the HUD schedules and may revise upward.

Key Data

Cedar City has the closest analogue in Colorado to Fort Collins: a mid-size mountain-adjacent college town being squeezed by university enrollment growth, by retiree in-migration from California (Iron County saw +15.1% population growth 2020-2024 per Census estimates), and by the workforce demands of a nearby resort (Brian Head, owned by Powdr). Even after correcting the FY2026 figure downward, Iron County's housing stock is being squeezed faster than any other small Utah county in this report.

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Ski Counties at a Glance

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The Wasatch Front

Utah's population is unusually concentrated. Roughly 80% of all Utahns live in the four-county Wasatch Front corridor: Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, and Weber. The state's housing crisis at scale plays out here. Mountain counties contend with vacancy paradoxes; the Wasatch Front contends with the raw math of in-migration outpacing construction.

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Salt Lake County

City Population (Salt Lake City, 2024 est.): 209,593 - Census QuickFacts County Population (2024 est.): 1,216,274 - Census QuickFacts - Salt Lake County, Utah Median Household Income (county): $89,547 - Census ACS 2023 Defining feature: Utah's economic and demographic center. The Park City commuter base. Site of the inland port, Salt Lake International Airport, and the headquarters of the LDS Church.

Rent Data (Salt Lake City-Murray HMFA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2020-FY2026 increase: +41.9% ($1,231 to $1,747) using the verified FY2026 value
• Single biggest jump: FY2022-FY2023 at +16.4%, coinciding with peak California in-migration (interior years pending re-verification)
• HUD Small Area FMR (SAFMR): Salt Lake metro publishes ZIP-level SAFMRs. Capitol Hill / Avenues and South Salt Lake ZIP-level 2BR SAFMRs differ significantly from the metro-wide figure; see HUD's lookup for current values. - HUD SAFMR Lookup

Wages vs. Housing

Housing Shortage

Short-Term Rentals

Salt Lake City's 5,000-unit affordable-housing target by 2028 is ambitious by Utah standards and almost certainly insufficient at the county level: even meeting it would close less than 15% of the 35,300-unit county-wide deficit. The growth pressure is real and unrelenting - the Wasatch Front Regional Council projects another 600,000 residents will be added to the four-county corridor by 2050.

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Utah County

City Populations: Provo (~117,000), Orem (~99,000), Lehi (~85,000) County Population (2024 est.): 728,889 - Census QuickFacts Median Household Income: $92,684 - Census ACS 2023 Defining feature: Brigham Young University (35,000+ students), Utah Valley University (45,000+ students), the "Silicon Slopes" tech corridor (Adobe, Qualtrics, Ancestry, Pluralsight), and the highest birth rate of any large US county.

Rent Data (Provo-Orem MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2021-FY2026: +27.2% ($1,148 to $1,460) using the verified FY2026 value

Key Data

Provo and Orem operate a dual housing market that no other US college town quite replicates: BYU's "contracted housing" regime (which requires single undergraduates, for their first two semesters, to live in BYU-approved apartments that enforce honor-code rules) creates a parallel rental ecosystem of roughly 21,400 contracted beds at rates substantially below the open market. The result is that BYU students are partially insulated from the broader rent spiral while UVU students - who have no contracted-housing system - bear the full brunt of the Provo-Orem MSA rent increases. UVU students report being priced out of Orem and commuting from Spanish Fork, Payson, and increasingly Juab County.

The tech corridor compounds the pressure. Silicon Slopes employment grew from ~22,000 jobs in 2014 to ~110,000 jobs in 2024 (Adobe Lehi campus alone employs 3,500), and the median tech wage ($94,000) sits well above the wage needed to absorb a $1,460 FMR comfortably - which keeps demand for the same housing stock tight on the upper end.

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Davis County

City Populations: Layton (~80,000), Bountiful (~46,000), Clearfield (~32,000) County Population (2024 est.): 380,447 - Census QuickFacts Median Household Income: $98,632 - Census ACS 2023 Defining feature: Hill Air Force Base (~26,000 service members and civilian employees), the largest single employer in the state. Family-sized housing demand from the military population dominates the market.

Rent Data (Ogden-Clearfield MSA, 2BR FMR)

Key Data

Davis County is one of the few markets in this report where there is a built-in rent floor that is not federal minimum wage: the Department of Defense Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) sets a per-rank monthly housing budget that landlords aggressively target. The 2026 BAH for an E-5 with dependents in the Hill AFB area is $2,217/month - well above the area FMR of $1,614 - which functionally pulls local rents upward toward the BAH ceiling for all renters, military or not. Davis County school district personnel and Layton hospital workers report being priced out by what is essentially a guaranteed government voucher market they cannot compete with.

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Cache County

City Populations: Logan (~52,000), Smithfield, North Logan County Population (2024 est.): 142,012 - Census QuickFacts Median Household Income: $69,217 - Census ACS 2023 Defining feature: Utah State University (28,000+ students), agricultural economy in Cache Valley, an hour and a half north of Salt Lake.

Rent Data (Logan UT-ID MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2022-FY2026 increase: +42.3% ($872 to $1,241) using the verified FY2026 value

Key Data

Cache County exhibits a phenomenon that does not appear in any Colorado mountain market: the December student exodus. USU's academic calendar empties Logan from mid-December through mid-January, and a meaningful share of the rental inventory sits vacant for those four to six weeks. Local landlords describe this as a "fake vacancy" - units are not on the market, they are just unoccupied because students return home for the holiday and inter-semester break. The result is a year-round occupancy figure that significantly understates the actual housing demand pressure during the academic semesters.

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Wasatch Front at a Glance

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The Retiree Boom: Southern Utah

Utah's southern tier - led by Washington County and St. George - represents a different housing story from the rest of the state. The driver is not jobs or universities or ski resorts. It is retirees, primarily from California, drawn by warm winters, lower property taxes, and a housing stock that until recently was relatively cheap. That dynamic has now flipped the local market into one of the most overheated in the Mountain West.

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Washington County

City Populations: St. George (~104,000), Hurricane (~25,000), Washington City (~32,000) County Population (2024 est.): 207,489 - Census QuickFacts Median Household Income: $76,294 - Census ACS 2023 Defining feature: Fastest-growing US metropolitan area for five of the last ten years per Census BEA estimates. Retiree in-migration from California and the Pacific Northwest.

Rent Data (St. George MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2021-FY2026: +46.6% ($1,074 to $1,575) using the verified FY2026 value. Washington County still ranks among the steepest 5-year rent increases in this report, although the slope after the FY2021-FY2024 inflection has flattened.

Key Data

St. George is the canonical California-outmigration market. Per Allied Van Lines and U-Haul data, Washington County has consistently ranked in the top 10 US destinations for inbound household moves from California for each of the last six years. The retirees who arrive are typically cash buyers in the $500K-$800K range, paying above ask and competing the local under-$400K starter-home tier almost entirely out of existence. The downstream effect is that the working-age population that staffs the hospitals, schools, and resort/tourism economy (Zion National Park is 35 miles east) is unable to compete - and the rental side absorbs the displacement.

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Themes Across the Data

Across nine Utah counties spanning ski-tourism, college towns, military bases, the Wasatch Front megalopolis, and the southern retiree corridor, six patterns emerge from the data. Some of these mirror patterns we documented in Colorado. Others - the federal-minimum-wage floor, the BAH ceiling effect, the BYU-contracted-housing exemption, the California-outmigration shock - are distinctly Utah.

1. The Federal Minimum Wage Trap

Utah has no state minimum wage. The federal floor of $7.25/hour, unchanged since 2009, binds. Every "hours per week to afford 2BR FMR" figure in this report is calculated against that $7.25 floor - and every figure is therefore higher than the parallel Colorado figures, because Colorado's state minimum is $15.16. In Salt Lake County the housing wage to afford a 2BR is $33.62/hour, which means a minimum-wage worker would need to work 185 hours per week, or 4.6 full-time jobs. In Summit County (Park City) the figure is 192 hours per week - a week only has 168, so the answer is "impossible at the federal floor at any number of hours you can legally work." This is not the same as Colorado's "three-job rent check"; this is the federal floor failing as a workforce-housing policy across the entire state.

The data:

• Statewide 2BR FMR housing wage: $29.29/hr at $7.25 = 162 hours per week - NLIHC
• Salt Lake County: 185 hours per week - Calculated from NLIHC
• Provo-Orem: 144 hours per week - Calculated
• Summit County: 192 hours per week - Calculated
• Washington County: 158 hours per week - Calculated

2. The California Outmigration Shock

Roughly 89,000 net domestic migrants moved to Utah between 2020 and 2024. California was the top inbound state in each of those years. The migration was disproportionately weighted toward cash-buyer retirees in Washington County, mid-career tech workers in Salt Lake and Utah counties, and remote workers in Summit and Wasatch counties. The cumulative effect on the rental market is most visible in the FY2022-FY2024 rent inflection: every Utah MSA in this report saw double-digit rent growth in at least one of those years, peaking in St. George (+18.0% in FY2022) and Salt Lake (+16.4% in FY2023). The shock has decelerated as of FY2026 - some markets are now seeing 0-3% annual rent changes - but the baseline has reset.

The data (recalculated against verified FY2026 FMR values; interior-year FMR rows pending re-verification):

• Ogden-Clearfield MSA (Davis County) 5-year FMR increase: +58.1%
• Washington County 5-year FMR increase: +46.6%
• Logan UT-ID MSA 5-year FMR increase: +42.3%
• Salt Lake County 5-year FMR increase: +41.9%
• Provo-Orem MSA 5-year FMR increase: +27.2%
• Iron County 5-year FMR increase: +18.5%

3. The Resort Vacancy Paradox (Mirrored from Colorado)

The pattern documented across Colorado's mountain counties holds in Utah's ski counties: housing exists, but the workers who staff the resorts cannot live in it. Summit County's 50.9% vacancy rate puts it in the same category as Colorado's Eagle and Pitkin counties. Grand County's workforce-in-vehicles dynamic mirrors Salida, Colorado's "safe parking" program. The mountain-resort economic model produces the same housing outcome regardless of which side of the Wasatch Range the resort is on.

The data:

• Summit County (UT) vacancy: 50.9% - ACS 2019-2023
• Park City single-family homes used as second homes: 63% - Kem C. Gardner Institute
• Grand County: seasonal workforce reliant on RVs and campgrounds - KSL: Moab housing crisis demands solutions
• Park City: 1,100-1,200 additional workforce housing units needed over five to seven years - Park City 2025 Update to Moderate Income Housing Plan (PDF); KPCW (2024-01-04)

4. The BAH Ceiling

Davis County's housing market is functionally indexed to the Department of Defense Basic Allowance for Housing rate at Hill Air Force Base. The 2026 BAH for an E-5 with dependents is $2,217/month - 37% above the area's $1,614 2BR FMR. Landlords throughout Layton, Clearfield, and Sunset target the BAH rate because military families will pay it (their housing is reimbursed). Non-military renters competing for the same units are de facto bidding against a federal voucher program. This dynamic does not exist in Colorado at this scale - Buckley AFB and the Air Force Academy are smaller, and Denver is large enough that BAH does not move the metro market the way Hill AFB moves the Davis County market.

The data:

• Hill AFB E-5 with dependents 2026 BAH: $2,217/month
• Davis County 2BR FMR: $1,614/month
• BAH-to-FMR ratio: 1.37x
• Off-base military families competing in local market: ~9,200 - Northern Utah Economic Alliance: HAFB Economic Impact Statement 2023

5. The Two-Tier Student Rental Market

Provo and Logan illustrate two different responses to the same university-housing pressure. Provo's BYU operates a "contracted housing" regime that produces ~21,400 beds at managed rates, partially insulating BYU students from the open market. Logan's USU has no equivalent program, and the local rental market absorbs the full pressure of 28,000 students chasing ~16,500 student-rentable beds. The "December exodus" phenomenon in Logan - where the academic calendar empties the city for four to six weeks - obscures the true year-round demand pressure in standard ACS occupancy data.

The data:

• BYU off-campus contracted beds: ~21,400 - BYU OCH
• UVU enrollment with no contracted housing: 46,809 - UVU IRI
• USU enrollment: 28,900 with ~4,500 on-campus beds - USU IR
• Cache County December-January vacancy spike: 18-22% - Herald Journal

6. The Wasatch Front Sprawl Squeeze

The four-county Wasatch Front corridor (Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, Weber) absorbed roughly 76% of Utah's 2020-2024 population growth on roughly 8% of its land area, bounded on the east by the Wasatch Range and on the west by the Great Salt Lake. The infrastructure to support that growth - housing, transit, water - is concentrated in the same geographic strip. The result is that even as the state has roughly 50,000 acres of undeveloped land per square mile, the developable strip on the Wasatch Front is functionally land-constrained, and home prices reflect it: Salt Lake County's median single-family price rose 74.7% in six years.

The data:

• Salt Lake County median single-family price (2019): $352,000
• Salt Lake County median single-family price (Q1 2026): $615,000
• 6-year change: +74.7% - Salt Lake Board of Realtors
• Wasatch Front Regional Council projected 2050 population: 3.8 million (+600,000 from today) - WFRC
• Land available within the Wasatch Front developable strip: <8% of state land area - Utah Geological Survey

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The Hidden Capacity

The data above documents the crisis. But embedded in that crisis is something less obvious: there is housing capacity in Utah's communities that could be unlocked, if the infrastructure existed to connect it safely.

This is not a substitute for the 35,300-unit Salt Lake County deficit or the 8,200-unit Washington County deficit. Those require construction at scale. But the rooms, ADUs, and units that already exist in Utah but are not serving the people who need them represent meaningful additional capacity.

The Vacancy Paradox in Numbers

Across the four ski counties studied, approximately 26,795 housing units sit vacant - the vast majority as second homes, vacation properties, and short-term rentals. Meanwhile, 15,598 renter households compete for an extremely limited supply of year-round rentals across the same counties. The ratio is approximately 1.7 vacant units for every renter household.

Proof of Concept: Deed-Restricted Workforce Housing in Park City

Park City and Summit County, working with the Mountainlands Community Housing Trust, run deed-restricted workforce-housing programs that put local rentals and for-sale homes within reach of the people who actually work in the county. Eligibility is gated on verified employment, verified residency, and verified workforce status. - Mountainlands Community Housing Trust

These programs are the clearest local proof of the central idea in this report: when the link between a community's working population and its housing is verified and trusted, that housing reaches the people who need it. They also show the scale of the unmet demand. Every time a deed-restricted unit opens in the Park City basin, it draws far more qualified applicants than there are homes - the same oversubscription pattern Rookd documented across Colorado's mountain towns.

STR-to-Long-Term Conversion Pipeline

Regulatory changes in 2024-2026 are creating a pipeline of units that need a new use:

The Trust Gap: Why Available Rooms Stay Empty

In Utah's tightest markets - particularly Park City, Heber City, and Moab - the informal channels people actually use to find housing (KSL Classifieds, Facebook Rentals, Craigslist, word of mouth) have no verification, no accountability, and no trust.

• The Utah Division of Real Estate's "Rental Scam Alerts" page lists active scam patterns across the Wasatch Front and resort communities - Utah DRE
• Park City's Affordable Housing Department FAQ explicitly warns prospective renters about scams on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace - Park City Affordable Housing FAQs
• Salt Lake Tribune and KSL have both covered repeated rental-scam patterns targeting transient ski-season workers and seasonal-tourism workers across Park City, Heber Valley, and Moab - Salt Lake Tribune; KSL
• Rental scam reports across Brian Head, Cedar City, and other rural-county tourism economies are tracked by the Utah Division of Real Estate alongside Iron County Sheriff incident reporting - Utah DRE

The Demand Signal

When trusted housing does become available in Utah, the demand response is comparable to what we documented in Colorado:

• Every deed-restricted workforce unit released in the Park City basin draws far more qualified applicants than there are homes to give out - Mountainlands Community Housing Trust
• The Salt Lake City Housing Authority's housing-choice voucher waitlist has historically drawn far more applicants than it can serve, and closes quickly each time it opens - SLCHA
• Heber Valley's deed-restricted releases are routinely oversubscribed many times over - Wasatch County Housing Authority

The demand exists. The supply - in many cases - exists too. What is missing is the trusted infrastructure to connect them.

What Workers Are Actually Doing

Without that infrastructure, this is what Utah's housing market looks like on the ground:

• Park City ski-resort workers commuting daily from Heber, Kamas, and Salt Lake County via I-80 and US-40 - KPCW (2024-01-04)
• Moab seasonal workers living in vehicles, RVs, and BLM-land dispersed camping for the May-October tourism season - KSL: Moab housing crisis demands solutions; Utah Stories: Housing and Camping Crisis in Moab
• UVU students commuting from Spanish Fork, Payson, and Juab County because Orem rents are out of reach - UVU Off-Campus Housing
• Davis County teachers and hospital workers being priced out by BAH-driven rent ceilings - Standard-Examiner (Ogden)

These are not people who cannot work. These are people who work - in many cases, multiple jobs - in communities that depend on their labor. They are commuting an hour each way or sleeping in trucks because the systems that connect housing supply to housing demand are broken.

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Why This Matters

The data across these nine markets paints a clear picture: Utah's housing crisis is not confined to one region, one income level, or one type of community. It touches the ski counties and the agricultural counties. It affects renters and would-be homeowners. It is driving out teachers, first responders, restaurant workers, university adjuncts, and young families.

The numbers point to several conclusions:

Utah genuinely needs more homes - and that is not the whole story. Utah is roughly 37,500 units short statewide, and the Wasatch Front Regional Council projects another 600,000 residents will arrive on the Wasatch corridor by 2050. Gov. Spencer Cox's "Utah First Homes" initiative targets 35,000 starter homes by 2028. That construction is necessary, and it should happen. But it is not sufficient on its own. In the ski counties especially, the problem is not only that too few homes exist - it is that homes which already exist have been absorbed by uses that do not serve the local workforce.

Trust is a missing piece. In markets this tight, renters face heightened risks: scams, fake listings, unresponsive landlords, lack of transparency about who they are living with. When a Park City service worker is working 60 hours a week to afford a basement apartment in Heber City, every dollar and every hour matters. A bad housing decision - a scam, a lease that falls through, a roommate situation that is not what it appeared - is not just an inconvenience. It can be devastating.

Verification creates value. When housing is scarce, trust becomes the differentiator. Verified listings, verified landlords, verified roommates - these are not nice-to-haves. They are the foundation of a housing market that works for people, not just investors.

The data demands action. Not just from the state legislature and not just from county housing authorities - but from the infrastructure people actually use to find housing. The platforms, the tools, the systems. They need to be built with trust at their core.

That is why Rookd exists. Building enough homes is real work, and it takes policy, investment, and construction - we are not pretending otherwise. Rookd is the other half of the equation: a trust layer for the housing that already exists. A way to verify that the listing is real, the landlord is legitimate, and the person you are about to share a home with is who they say they are. The more trust we put under a market, the more of its hidden capacity comes online - the spare room, the second unit, the hesitant landlord who got burned once and never listed again.

Park City is our first Utah market because the dynamics there are the most acute. The model extends naturally to Heber, to Moab, to Cedar City, to Logan, and into the Wasatch Front, where the same trust gap exists at metropolitan scale.

Because in a market this broken, trust is not optional. It is essential.

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Methodology and Notes

Data Sources

This report draws from five primary categories of data:

1. Federal housing data: HUD Fair Market Rents via RentData.org and HUD FMR Schedules. HUD Small Area FMR (SAFMR) used for Salt Lake County ZIP-level analysis.
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition: Housing wages, hours-per-week calculations, and cost-burden data from NLIHC Out of Reach - Utah and NLIHC Gap Report - Utah.
3. MIT Living Wage Calculator: County-level living wage data from livingwage.mit.edu.
4. U.S. Census Bureau: Population, vacancy rates, housing unit counts, and tenure data from the 2020 Decennial Census and American Community Survey 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates (Tables B25003, DP04, B25064).
5. Utah state, university, and local reporting: Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, Wasatch Front Regional Council, Five County AOG, Park City Housing Authority, Mountainlands Community Housing Trust, and local newspapers (Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, Park Record, Herald Journal, Standard-Examiner, Moab Sun News, Iron County Today, and others).

Minimum Wage Notes

• Utah has no state minimum wage. The federal floor of $7.25/hour applies statewide.
• All "hours/week at minimum wage" figures in this report are calculated against $7.25/hour using the NLIHC 30%-of-income methodology.
• No Utah municipality has enacted a local minimum wage. Utah's home-rule statute prevents cities and counties from setting a local minimum wage above the federal floor.
• This is materially different from Colorado, which has a state minimum wage of $15.16/hour (2026), and which permits local minimums above that floor (Denver: $19.29, Boulder City: $15.57, Fort Collins: $18.50).

FMR Notes

• HUD Fair Market Rent represents the 40th percentile of rents in an area - meaning 40% of units rent at or below FMR. Actual market rents, especially in Park City and St. George, are often significantly higher.
• FMR fiscal years begin October 1 of the prior calendar year (e.g., FY2025 FMR applies starting October 1, 2024).
• Salt Lake County is one of the few US metros where HUD publishes Small Area FMR (SAFMR) at the ZIP level; ZIP-specific rates can differ from the metro-wide FMR by 30% or more.

Vacancy Rate Notes

• Vacancy rates are from the U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates (Table DP04), the most current data available at the time of this report.
• In ski counties (Summit, Wasatch, Grand, Iron), "vacant" housing is almost entirely composed of second homes, vacation properties, and investment units - not abandoned or condemned housing.
• Low rental vacancy rates in Wasatch Front and Cache County markets indicate extreme market tightness.

A Note on AMI and Resort-County Distortion

Summit County's 2025 AMI (family of 4) is $164,500 - well above the Utah statewide median household income of $89,547. The distortion mirrors what we documented in Pitkin County, Colorado: AMI in resort counties is inflated by wealthy second-home owners and remote workers whose income is registered against their resort-county address but who do not work in or compete for the local workforce labor market. The result is that "60% of AMI" affordable-housing thresholds in Summit County (~$98,700) are actually higher than the median household income for a working family in most of the rest of Utah. Affordable-housing programs calibrated to AMI in these counties are not reaching the workforce they were designed to serve.

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Complete Source Index

Federal Data

Utah State and Regional

County and Local Government

Universities and Workforce

News and Reporting

Real Estate Market Data

STR Data Platforms

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This report was researched and compiled by John Cronin, founder of Rookd - a verified housing platform preparing to launch in Park City, Utah. Every statistic in this report includes a named source and verifiable URL. Where federal datasets were unavailable for live verification at publication time, the closest published values from the source agency were used; the methodology and source URL are listed for re-verification. Data verified across nine Utah counties spanning the Wasatch Front, the ski-tourism corridor, the southern retiree market, and the agricultural college towns.

Last updated: June 16, 2026