St George, Utah- Where the Snow Birds Like to Land

St George, Utah has had its ups and downs just like other places.  Fortunately for us St Georgian's, the market has driven prices down far enough for snow birds to take advantage of it.  Now, when the market is picking up, the typical wave and mass migration to get out of the cold, of the snow birds or retirees, all looking for warmer weather, can now find a good landing place.  If you think about it, it has been a long old set of winters for a lot of snow birds wanting to get out of the cold, to be able to tell where they can put their money and not make a mistake.  

St George is located at 2,700 feet in elevation, 2 hours north of Las Vegas, just over the border into the southwestern corner of Utah.  Just to the north one ascends within 45 minutes up to 5000 feet elevation into Cedar City Utah.  Then starting at Cedar City, going further northward you have Beaver, Fillmore, Nephi, Orem, then into Salt Lake City, just four hours north. So, with it being a larger city along that Utah corridor of I-15, it holds a lot of charm for both northerners as well as southerners, sort of your last stop in the high mountain desert before ascending to the colder weather.  Thus, St George is one of the favorite places people like to flock to when complaining about too high of taxes or this or that government trend either local or Federal that they tend to disagree with.

St George property taxes are some of the lowest you'll find.  For a primary residence you'll be looking at about .55% of the properties taxed assessed value.  Second home owners get taxed at about 1% of the taxed assessed value of the home.  Many would love the second home owner tax rate, let alone the primary rate as "their new primary" rate.

St George has been in the news projected to be one of the fastest places to recover nationally.  This has been taking place on a modest level.  While prices are going up, there seems to be enough maintenance of prices staying down that many buyers have seen it as a possible destination to look into retirement now, when and while interest rates are still so very low.  But be aware, that it is possible prices will not stay this low for long as many segments are finding a fast shrinking inventory of homes on the market.  It is not like "our" inventory levels are as high and as big as other 'reservoirs' (inventory levels) which will take a much longer time to downsize, like with our neighbor two hours south, Las Vegas.  This has been pointed to as one of the reasons we've been projected to be one of the fastest places projected for recovery.  A surprising number of new construction starts tend to take place during our Spring months as further evidence of retirees flocking in here after what they just experienced as too cold of a winter.  If you need a place to start your real estate search into this area, please click here, while the getting is good.