Early Indicators Show Housing Stimulus is a Home Run

Early Indicators Show Housing Stimulus is a Home Run


by Grant S. Whitaker, 
President and Chief Executive Officer, 
Utah Housing Corporation

Utah is only one month into our economic stimulus for housing, and house sales are hopping. Nearly 250 people have already purchased homes with $6,000 Home Run Housing Grants. With 1,600 grants available, they could be gone in a matter of months.

March activity in the Salt Lake housing market scored among the highest in the country, according to Zelman & Associates, a leading national real estate research firm that measures activity in 55 markets around the country. The Home Run grant program is cited as a key factor.

Why is housing so important to our economic turnaround? It's this simple: the housing crisis led us into the recession and housing can lead us out. An oversupply of new unsold homes and a slow rate of sales led to unstable housing prices, major job losses in the residential construction industry and a decline in consumer confidence. Some 18,000 construction related workers lost jobs over the last two years, triple the loss of any other sector. The Home Run housing grant is pulling qualified buyers back into the market, thus generating jobs, removing excess industry, stabilizing home values and restoring consumer confidence.

Jim Wood, director of the University of Utah Bureau of Economic and Business Research, projects that nearly 9,000 jobs will be created by the 1,600 Home Run grants. He projects some $182 million in construction earnings and $324 million in total earnings. Putting construction workers back to work puts our economy back to work. That's why the Salt Lake Chamber put this as one of its key policy priorities in its Can-Do economic stimulus plan.