Melissa Ballman:
Today, I’m giving you a South Mountain neighborhood tour in Draper, Utah. If you’ve considered moving to Draper, there’s a good chance you’ve looked at houses on South Mountain. There’s a lot of things that are appealing. I actually lived on South Mountain for 15 years and don’t live far from it still today, 20 years in the making. So I’m very familiar with the neighborhood, all the amenities and more, so stay tuned.
Okay, so it’s a little bit too windy today. We have our big storm blowing in for the weekend, our first one for the winter, so I can’t talk to you while I’m out and about, but I took some video footage that I’m going to show throughout this video, so you can get an idea of what the neighborhood looks like, what the houses look like. It’s beautiful right now up there because of the fall colors being in October, so hopefully you enjoy that.
Now, South Mountain’s a pretty large mountain in Draper that separates Salt Lake County from Utah County or Draper from Lehigh, if you’re looking at particular cities. To make things simple, I am going to call South Mountain from Highland Drive up to Mike Weir Drive. I’ve already done videos on Sun Crest, and yes, technically Sun Crest is on South Mountain, but that’s a whole other beast to talk about.
The majority of houses on South Mountain were built in the mid 90s, I would say maybe 93, 95, up to about 2005, the majority. Now, there are some homes that are a little bit newer than that on South Mountain. So starting the furthest west on South Mountain, you have the Paragliding Park, and this is a great spot for Valley Views. It’s nice to go up there in the evenings and take a look at all the city lights. You’ll see that often, and most of the time the para gliders and the hang gliders are out on this north side of South Mountain. In the evenings, you’ll often see them up flying, and there are houses that back right up to the Paragliding Park, single family homes, all in this area, and they’re going to run you about $700,000 and up. Most of these houses by the Paragliding Park were built like late 90s and early 2000s.
Now, one thing that is great about South Mountain is you have access to trails everywhere you go, whether you’re mountain biking or hiking and just walking, you have everything. So South Mountain fits just about every budget that a buyer could be looking for in Draper, from townhouses to single family homes, all the way up to the famous Draper mansion with millions of dollars that everybody knows about. So generally speaking, I’ve seen townhouses around 450, 500 recently on South Mountain, but you are kind of pushing more towards the $600,000 range for a townhouse on South Mountain that’s pretty decent size, like 2,500 square feet. When you get to the single family homes, not the mansions or the big, big homes, you’re talking right around $700,000 up to, like I said, millions of dollars on South Mountain for single family homes.
We also have several gated communities on South Mountain. You have Draper Heights that is just about a mile and a half east of the Paragliding Park. And then you have more gated communities as you make your way over to the Corner Canyon area on that east bench of South Mountain. And also there are townhouses that are gated along the east bench of South Mountain as well.
Now South Mountain actually has the Draper Rec center, the indoor pool, and the outdoor pool that’s attached to the rec center. You have the golf course, South Mountain Golf Course up on South Mountain, right off Mike Weir Drive. And then you have the Draper Amphitheater that’s over by the rec center, and they do a lot of concerts and plays and things like that in the summertime. And then throughout South Mountain, you’ll see all kinds of different parks and walking trails through neighborhoods. So if you want to get outdoors, this is a great place to do it.
So one thing I’ve been getting asked a lot about is property taxes. To kind of give you an idea, my house that I have up on South Mountain, it was built end of 2001. It’s about 3,400 square feet, and I am a lucky one that has just about a third of an acre. And my property taxes for 2023 are going to be $3,400 for the year on that property. If schools is something that you’re concerned about or very interested in, South Mountain is part of the Corner Canyon boundaries. So kids attend Corner Canyon High School, they go to Draper Park Middle School boundaries, and then they could have various elementary schools. If you want charter schools, you’re only a few miles away from some charter schools in Draper. If you’re looking for private schools, there’s a big private school campus that it would be about, depending on where you’re at on South Mountain, you’re probably about five miles from a private school institution that does pre-K through 12th grade.
And the drawback to living on South Mountain is you are a little bit further away from the amenities. So it may take you five to 10 minutes to get to a grocery store or a pharmacy. Right on Highland there are gas stations, so you could go to a gas station pretty conveniently. But the benefit, the one thing I always loved about living on South Mountain, if you watched my inversion video last year, I actually took that video from South Mountain. And when you live on South Mountain, you’re kind of right at that bench, and so you feel like you’re getting out of the inversion. Now, if the inversion is really bad, you’re probably still stuck in it. But if it’s not too bad, you kind of feel like you’re looking down at the inversion in the valley and getting out of it without having to go all the way up to Sun Crest.
I hope you enjoyed my tour of South Mountain in Draper, Utah today. If you’re considering making a move to Draper or South Mountain or anywhere in the Greater Salt Lake City area, I’d love to connect with you. Shoot me a text, send me an email, do what you got to do, get in touch with me. But as always, make it a great day.
