Moving from California to Salt Lake City

Video Transcription

Moving from California to Utah? If you’re thinking about making the move, check out my video. Now you can find lots of videos all over, about moving to Utah from California, but what makes mine different is I am a California girl that moved to Utah myself. So you’re going to hear it. I was raised in San Diego and moved to Utah in my twenties. So stay tuned and let’s talk, moving to Utah.

Hi, this is Melissa Ballman with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services and Utah Homes by Melissa. So today we’re going to talk about making the move from California to Utah, and like I said at the intro, I am a California, I’d say native. I moved to California when I was one. And so it’s really all I had ever known until I moved to Utah in my mid twenties. That was back in 2002. So I’ve been in Utah for almost 18 years, or just over 18 years at the time of this recording.

Let’s talk about making that move. Now for me personally, I left California because I was tired of paying the sunshine tax, as I call it. It was just getting to be way too expensive and really there wasn’t a huge quality of life because I had to work all of the time. At the time my son was under one and he sat in daycare all day while I worked my tail off just to afford living there and I wasn’t willing to miss out on his life. So that’s why I personally left California.

Now, a lot of people are making that move right now for very similar reasons. It’s just getting way too expensive in California. Some people don’t like the politics in California and the direction things are heading. Whatever your reason is, Utah is a fantastic place to live, in my opinion. I will say I do more outdoors now than I ever did in California, even as a teenager, growing up. Aside from not having the ocean, there’s everything in Utah. We have five national parks, the most of any state in the country, so there’s tons of hiking. Every city practically has trails for walking, biking, just so much. You have lakes and reservoir. So if you’re into boating and paddle boarding, you can still do that in Utah. And everything is relatively close. I mean, in California, if I wanted to go skiing, it was a two and a half plus hour drive each direction. Here in Salt Lake County, I’m 20, 25 minutes away. So you’re never running out of options for things to do outside.

Let’s talk cost of living. California is expensive, there’s no other way about it. So looking at the average sales price in Utah for a residential sale, so that doesn’t matter if it’s a single family, townhouse, condo, residential sales in June of 2020, the average sales price in Salt Lake County was just over $426,000. Now, if you’re looking in Utah County, the average sales price was just under $388,000. And then of course, there’s Davis County, which the average sales price again was just under $385,000. Now, California is significantly more than that and your houses are generally a lot smaller than what you get in Utah.

One of my real estate friends up in the Bay Area, she was saying that the average sales price in one of the counties up there was just over $714,000, average sales price. And in another County up there just over a $1 million average sales price. So significant difference in the cost of housing alone. And of course there’s taxes and gasoline and food and entertainment and all of that sort of stuff, that it’s just way less expensive in Utah than it is in California.

Now, one thing that is not cheaper in Utah than in California is colleges. Back when I went to college, the community college was significantly less than it was here in Utah. I actually went back to school to do sign language interpreting. It was probably in about 2014, 2015, something like that, and I was paying over triple tuition and book cost going to a community college here in Utah than I was when I was in San Diego. So just be prepared for that if you’re looking to be a student here, or you have kids that are going to be students here. Even as a resident, I have found that most colleges are significantly more here than they were in California.

So if you’re thinking about making the move to Utah, you have Northern Utah and Southern Utah. It’s a lot like Northern California versus Southern California, just not nearly as big. So I’m up in the salt Lake County area, which is considered Northern Utah and we have three main counties along the Wasatch Front, is what we call it. So we have Davis County, and then a little further South is Salt Lake County, and then a little further South of that is Utah County. There are of course other areas, but I’m only covering those three counties because those are the areas that I primarily work in.

Now, if you want to head all the way South in Utah, you have St. George area, and that is about a two and a half, three hour drive to Cedar City and then about four hours to St. George. Like I said, definitely not as big as California with the Northern and Southern parts, but just understand that Utah is kind of broken up very similar.

Now let’s talk about California. I often get asked all the time, “How did you leave California to move to Utah?” And I’ll be honest with you, there are still parts of me that miss California. I am a beach girl. I love the ocean. There is just a peace at the ocean that you don’t find anywhere else, at least for me. And so let’s be honest, there’s always going to be parts of you that’s going to miss California if you move to Utah and there’s just no getting around that. But I think that’s true of anywhere you move and anything you do. You just have to make the most out of it.

And speaking of making the most out of it, if you’re from California, chances are, you are an In-N-Out Burger fan and good news, we do have In-N-Out Burger in Salt Lake County. So if you’re worried about making that transition over, we’ve got you covered here.

If you’d like this video, make sure you check out my 10 Things to Know About Moving to Utah video. There I talk about a lot of things that people are going to want to know about climate, liquor laws in Utah, because we always hear the worst stories about Utah and what it’s truly like. So check out that video. If you are thinking about making the move, reach out to me, I’d love to connect with you, and we can talk more about my perspective as a former Californian to moving to Utah. As always, have a great day.