In the past 30 years, anyone hoping to buy a new home in Utah has essentially had only two places to look: along the Wasatch Front and in Washington County.

In that time span, permits have been issued for about 416,000 single-family homes, condos, duplexes and town homes. Two-thirds of them have been built either in Salt Lake County or in one of its three most populous neighbors: Davis, Utah and Weber counties.

About another 13% of the new residences have been located in Washington County, according to a database maintained by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and the Ivory-Boyer Real Estate Center, which contains permits issued by location, date, construction type and building type going back to 1994. The Salt Lake Tribune pulled data through September of last year.

Troy Ence, a southern Utah builder, says as more people move there for the weather, residential construction or purchase is starting to push out from city centers — as it already has in the Salt Lake Valley.

It’s also shifted largely toward condominiums and town homes, as the state’s housing crisis prices people out of single-family detached homes, said Ence, who owns Ence Homes based in St. George.

“In the past, there’s been a pretty good deal for pretty good sized lots and there wasn’t as much multifamily, but there’s a lot more now,” he said. “Prices have skyrocketed, and that’s what they can afford.”

Those trends likely will continue, said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at the technology-powered real estate brokerage Redfin. However, she expects a slowdown in new condo construction toward the end of the year.

Here are three major trends the database shows.

Salt Lake and Utah counties top the list

Here’s how many of the 416,000 new dwellings built for sale have gone up in the largest four Wasatch Front counties:

• 99,276 buildings, or 23.84%, in Salt Lake County.

• 98,870 buildings, or 23.74%, in Utah County.

• 49,593 buildings, or 11.91%, in Davis County.

• 25,332 buildings, or 6.08%, in Weber County.

About 54,000 new residential buildings were permitted in Washington County. The remaining about 89,000 buildings were permitted in the state’s 24 other counties — mostly in Cache and Tooele — though there’s no data for Daggett County since 2011.

A big boom in a smaller city

Though Washington County doesn’t have the most permits when compared to other counties, its biggest town — St. George — is the state’s top-ranked municipality.

Between 1994 and September 2024, officials issued 25,280 permits for 28,152 units in duplexes, single-family detached homes, condos and town homes, according to the Ivory-Boyer Construction Database.

That’s about 8,000 more than the next-highest city, South Jordan.

Ence of Ence Homes said people have been moving to St. George and the surrounding area for “pretty much the same reason” his entire career — the weather.

“For years and years, there have been people with second homes,” he said. “There’s getting to be more and more people who spend all year here. They’re not as worried about how it gets in the summer.”

Residents have moved from California and Washington to get away from pricier real estate markets, he said, and “when the inversion hits (in the Salt Lake Valley), people just flock to St. George.”

As land has become more expensive in St. George — as it did in the Salt Lake Valley — people have started moving out into the county, Ence said, and toward Hurricane.

With available land and better prices, Hurricane is the most up-and-coming city in the area, he said, and development is booming on land between there and St. George — especially by Sand Hollow State Park.

At 7,025 permits, Hurricane has the 15th most issued in the state, and about 2,000 of those have come in the past decade.

City suburbs are growing

Most of the construction in the state has been in the suburbs of the major metropolitan areas of Salt Lake City and Provo-Orem. Besides the state’s biggest southern city, the most permits in the past three decades have been near them.

• South Jordan: 17,397 buildings.

• Lehi: 17,128 buildings.

• West Jordan: 14,022 buildings.

• Eagle Mountain: 12,943 buildings.

• Washington: 11,984 buildings.

• Herriman: 11,651 buildings.

• Saratoga Springs: 11,362 buildings.

• Draper: 10,764 buildings.

• West Valley City: 9,623 buildings.

That’s common because the suburbs are where there’s land available, Fairweather of Redfin said.

It’s harder to get infill buildings approved in places like Salt Lake City that are mostly developed, she said, and “easier to come in and build cookie cutter on a big plot of land.”

But people also are choosing to move to the outskirts of cities for various reasons, Fairweather said. There’s more space and a lower cost of living, she said, and people have concerns about safety and crime in the city.

But areas with new construction still need to be close enough to things people want, Fairweather said. Developers look at cost of land, additional costs to link to utilities or existing infrastructure and demand.

“If it were really cheap land but there weren’t any amenities,” she said, “developers wouldn’t really want to build there.”

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.

A note to readers • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.