Utah’s overheating housing market isn’t a bubble and could get worse,

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Home and apartment hunting in Utah are both major headaches right now, but the years ahead could get even tougher for renters and would-be homebuyers.

In a first-of-its-kind study that blends new real estate data with construction trends, top experts at the University of Utah are warning of severe imbalances in the state’s residential markets, dwindling affordability and steady rent and home price hikes well into next year and beyond.

The first-ever State of the State’s Housing Market paints a picture of a market bent out of shape to historic proportions, in part due to the pandemic. There’s now a lack of supply of dwellings of all kinds, from least to most expensive, on and off the Wasatch Front, as coronavirus-fueled demand and low-interest rates have spurred sales and pinched housing inventories across Utah.

Over half of households can no longer afford a median-priced home as of this year, the study finds. Renters, at the same time, see their path to homeownership increasingly blocked, with upward of 72% no longer able to afford a down payment and mortgage for an affordable home.

Mix all that with stubborn disruptions to world supply chains and labor markets for homebuilding and it’s no wonder many are calling this a housing crisis.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said senior economist and veteran housing expert James Wood, a study co-author at the University of Utah’s Kem. C. Gardner Institute in Salt Lake City. “People cannot get into the rental market or the homeownership market.”

Wood and others called for swift action on Utah’s Capitol Hill and among city leaders who are in control of zoning regulations to address the problem.

Despite all the disturbing indicators, he and others are pretty much ruling out the idea that Wasatch Front markets are developing a housing bubble. Utah’s economy remains strong in its COVID recovery and job growth is a big part of what is fueling demand.

Matt Ulrich, president of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors, sought to put a positive face on the study’s main findings, calling home markets and sales trends “healthy” though highly competitive from Logan to St. George. Leading builders, for their part, say they’re having to get “creative” in the face of unprecedented challenges to keeping prices down.

“We continue to be innovative with this opportunity,” said Paul Peterson, regional president for homebuilder Richmond American Homes, when asked to address what some builders refer to as a current “shortage of everything” when it comes to basic construction materials such as lumber, steel and household fixtures.

But the new study is a stark snapshot of how a decadeslong backlog in affordable home construction has conspired with COVID-19 to all but wipe out affordability for an increasing number of state residents.

Not once since the 1970s has Utah’s…