Melissa Ballman:
10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Move to Salt Lake City Utah.
Why you should NOT move to the Salt Lake City area. That’s what I’m talking about today, if you’re thinking about making a move to the greater Salt Lake City Utah area, you may want to reconsider where you’re moving if you can’t live with a couple of things that I’m going to talk about today, so stay tuned.
Hi, this is Melissa Ballman, and I’m a real estate agent here in the greater Salt Lake City area. What that means, if you’re looking at making a real estate move I’d love to connect with you. Shoot me a text, send me an email, do what you got to do, but get in touch with me.
But first, today we’re talking about reasons why you may not want to live in Salt Lake City Utah, or the greater surrounding areas of Salt Lake City. Now, I wanted to create you guys a list of things that are different, then you’ll see anywhere else. Of course, you can look all over the internet and see the liquor laws, and how they’re different. And I’ve even done a video about that, so I’m not going to talk about that.
I want to talk about a few things you may not realize, that Utah is not necessarily known for by the majority of people. First, the drivers. The drivers are terrible for the most part, in Utah. There’s very rarely a time that I’m driving on the freeway and I don’t see a car accident, so be prepared. And that’s even in the summertime when there’s no snow and ice to compete with.
People drive way too fast for the road conditions, or over the speed limit. Which, by the way, in Salt Lake City our freeway speed limit is 70 miles per hour. Just be prepared for really inconsiderate drivers who cut you off, don’t use their blinker, or if they do use their blinker they think that automatically means they get to come over, so be prepared for bad drivers.
Number two. This is high desert weather. We don’t have the humidity that you find in other places. I actually saw somebody post something, that moved here from back east, and said, “In the midwest and in the east when it’s hot you boil. But in Utah when it’s hot you broil.” And that’s true.
So, if you love humidity this is not the place for you. We are babies about humidity, so be prepared for dry weather, which means a lot of people get bloody noses very easily, you have to drink way more water, but that’s what makes for the greatest snow on earth, is because it’s dry.
We have a lot of outdoorsy people. Now, coming from San Diego you would think I was an outdoorsy person, but it is nothing compared to what it’s like here in Utah. When I scroll through social media most of my friends are posting about the hikes that they’re doing, or mountain biking, or being at a national park, or camping. You name it, people are doing it here in Utah, because we live in such a beautiful state. There’s so much to see and so much to do.
If you do not like being an outdoorsy person and you just want to sit in your house you may not like it, because a lot of your friends that you’re going to make here are probably outdoorsy people. I hope you’re enjoying my video so far, if you haven’t already make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the bell, that way you’re alerted each week when I drop a new video.
And if you’re on Facebook hop on over to our private community page called Salt Lake Life, and there we talk about all things, events, and happenings around the greater Salt Lake City area. The houses are big in Utah, generally speaking, compared to most other places.
Now, growing up in California, in San Diego, if people had a 1200 to 1500 square foot house that is huge. But let me tell you, you can find a condo here that’s 900 to 1200 square feet for a condo. I have friends that live in townhouses that start at 2300, 2400 square feet and that’s the smaller end.
That may not be a good thing to some people, because that’s a lot of houses to clean and maintain. When you’re looking at homes don’t be surprised if a single-family home is 3000, 4000, 6000, 10,000, 12,000 square feet. And I’m not kidding. We have big houses here.
And of course, home prices. Home prices have skyrocketed the last few years. Gone are the days where people feel like Utah is affordable. In June, of 2021 the unofficial pricing for Salt Lake County only, for all units sold in Salt Lake County the average sales price was $555,000 in Salt Lake County.
Now, of course, you can find things less than that, but just be prepared if you’re moving here from out of state and you think, “I’m going to go to Utah because it’s inexpensive.” That’s not actually the case anymore. You need a car for the area. Utah is not really commuter-friendly.
Now, if you’re going to live downtown and you work downtown, yeah you could probably get by during the week. But again, you live in such a beautiful state, you’re going to want to explore it and the only way to explore it, is having a car.
Our mass transit system is getting better, but generally speaking, it’s not something that most people take unless they have a super easy, nearby commute, so if they’re taking FrontRunner or TRAX they usually won’t walk very far to get to those, and there’s only a couple of lines. Nothing like you see back east, so moving here, be prepared. You have to have a car.
Next. High schools, public high schools are pretty big, so if you have school-aged children that are either in high school or going to be in high school be prepared for really big schools, which equates to big classes.
When high schools have graduations they actually don’t even hold them at their local high school, they have to go up to the colleges and sports arenas, and things like that, where they hold concerts and stuff, because the classes are so big.
When my son graduated in 2020 there was nearly 1000 kids that graduated in his class, so it is not unusual for the public high schools to have 3000 plus students at one high school. If you love your sports, and more importantly, if you love tailgating, Utah may not be the place for you.
Now, again, I didn’t have great sports teams growing up, but it’s not quite like it is here in Salt Lake City. Now, of course, we have The Salt Lake Real for a professional soccer team. And we have minor league Salt Lake Bees for baseball. And of course, Oakland just moved to Vegas, which is like a five, six-hour drive from Salt Lake City.
But people are mainly into college sports here, so you’ll hear more about college sports, which is great, but you don’t find the tailgating at the sporting events like you do in other parts of the country. I have tailgated in Boston, in San Diego, and nobody tailgates here quite like that.
Next. Salt Lake City, people really pet-friendly. Now, in my opinion we got to catch up with the dog-friendly places, but we do have them. We do have dog-friendly restaurants and it’s not unusual to be doing that outdoorsy stuff and come across dogs, and depending on what area, especially along the east side of Salt Lake City, to have horses on trails and things like that.
If you’re not a dog person, be prepared on those trails and walking, and things like that, that you’re probably going to come across quite a few dogs. And also, I used to volunteer at the Humane Society, and I still follow them on social media. And we have really high adoption rates here, so it’s not unusual for the Humane Society to bring animals in from other states so that they can find homes and be adopted.
Now, that’s not a negative to me. I love it. But if you’re not a pet person, you may not like it here. I hope you enjoyed my video today on 10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Move to Salt Lake City Utah. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me, I’m always here to help. But as always, make it a great day.