City folk bitch and moan about the high price of housing in Zion all the time. Face it, kids, we've been discovered by the tech world and supporting industries and people are moving here in droves. When there's high demand, there's high prices for rentals and purchases. You think you have it bad? I'm a native New Yorker and I pay attention to my birth state, so check out sales there in 2019:

The Top 10 sales in the Big Apple last year were in a new high-rise called 220 Central Park South. Hedge fund manager and billionaire Kenneth Griffin bought four floors there for a cool $240 million. That figure is the highest purchase price in the entire country for a condo. The highest sale of a condo reported in Utah was for $7,525,000 in 2019. That was after they had dropped the price from $8,050,000. Another fund manager bought one at 220 Central Park South for almost $93 million and the musician Sting picked up one for $65.75 million.

SLC and New York City saw a weird housing market last year. Yes, prices went up, but some went down and many sellers who thought they were going to take advantage of a seller's market found that they weren't going to cash out for as much as they had hoped. One downtown Salt Lake City condo building where I sell a lot of units never has anything for sale. Yet, at the beginning of December, they had six on the market. When my sellers got an offer for slightly less than asking price, I asked, "Do you want to be one of the six for sale or do you want to be one of the six that sold?" We're closing escrow momentarily on that unit. Homes and condos sat on the market a little longer in both cities.

City Creek, across from Temple Square, announced in November that it was nearly sold out of all condos and didn't plan on building any more high-end units. In NYC, high-end units are having a hard time selling because the construction boom there has been enormous and high-end inventory abounds. The high-end residential tower at 15 Hudson Yards that opened in 2016 has only sold a little more than half of its inventory and a new building is going in next door with even more luxury condos. According to data mining company marketproof.com, at least a quarter of New York condos built after 2013 were still unsold in the early fall of last year. In Salt Lake City, only 12 condos built after 2013 were for sale as of last week.

What's the prediction for 2020? I've got no great answers for you, because politics might rule the year. Mortgage rates don't typically change drastically during these years and well, interest rates are low and should remain under 5% in 2020. Inventory isn't being built fast enough to meet demand and prices will still go up, while some will go down.