How big is Utah's housing shortage?

Utah’s housing shortage is real, and the number attached to it is less solid than it sounds.

I am not saying that to be contrarian. I am saying it because the figure gets quoted in listing copy and news segments as though it were a measurement, like rainfall, and it is not. It is an estimate with choices inside it.

Understanding those choices is genuinely useful, because it tells you which version of the number to trust and what it does and does not predict about the house you are trying to buy.

The numbers, and where they come from

The authoritative source is the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah, in State of the State’s Housing Market: 2025-2026, published September 2026. Three figures from it.

Utah passes four million people in 2035 and needs 280,000 additional housing units. That is the headline projection, and it is a ten-year statewide figure.

Utah permitted 26,053 units in 2025. Hold those two side by side and you have the whole argument in one line.

About 61,500 new units are needed for people aged 35 and younger, and this one says owner and renter. A large part of it is rental, which is the half that never gets quoted when this number appears in a listing or a news segment. If you are reading the shortage as a reason house prices must rise, you are reading a figure that is substantially about apartments.

Where the number comes from

The authoritative source in Utah is the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah. They publish the state’s demographic and housing analysis, including an annual look at the housing market, and essentially every shortage figure you see in Utah media traces back to them whether or not the article says so.

Their definition is simple and worth knowing: a shortage exists when the growth in households outpaces the growth in housing units. Count how many new households formed over a period. Count how many units got built over the same period. The difference is the gap.

That is a sound way to do it. It is also where all the judgment calls live.

Why the number moves so much

Four choices, each defensible, each capable of moving the answer by thousands of units.

The base year

Measuring from 2011 gives a different answer than measuring from 2017 or 2020. Utah built very little immediately after the financial crisis and a great deal in the early 2020s, so where you start determines how much catch-up is already counted.

What counts as available

A housing unit that exists is not necessarily a housing unit someone can move into. Second homes, short-term rentals and units held off the market exist in the count but not in the market. How an analyst treats those changes the result, and in parts of Washington County it changes it a lot.

Whether the gap is cumulative or annual

Some figures describe a backlog built up over a decade. Others describe the shortfall in a single year. Those are different numbers measuring different things, and they get quoted interchangeably.

Revisions

Household estimates get revised when better data arrives. A shortage figure published two years ago may have been recalculated since, and the old number keeps circulating anyway.

So when you see one figure stated flatly, the honest reading is: that was one method’s answer, for one period, as of one publication. The range across recent published estimates has been wide.

Why the mechanism matters more than the figure

Here is the part I would actually act on.

The direction has been consistent even as the magnitude moved around. Household formation outpacing unit construction is not a one-year anomaly in Utah, and the reasons it persisted, land constraints, trade labor, and city-level rules written for a smaller state, are slow to change. Why Utah got expensive is the longer version of that mechanism.

What this means practically is that you should not plan around the shortage closing. You should plan around where it binds least.

What a shortage figure cannot tell you

This is where I see it misused most, usually in a listing.

It is a statewide number and you are buying one house. A gap of any size says nothing about whether the specific house you want is competitively priced. Two houses on the same street can be one fair and one reaching.

It does not mean every house sells

This is the one that catches sellers. A shortage of housing and a shortage of buyers at your price are unrelated conditions, and both can be true at once. Why houses are not selling right now is what that looks like in practice.

It does not forecast prices

Supply is one input. Rates, local employment and what else is listed that week all move a specific sale.

It is not evenly distributed

The gap is concentrated in certain price bands and certain geographies. Entry-level product is where the squeeze is real; it is not uniform across every segment.

How to read any shortage claim in thirty seconds

Three questions, and they work on any version of this number you encounter.

Over what period?

A cumulative backlog since 2011 and a single-year shortfall are different quantities. If the claim does not say, it is probably cumulative and being presented as current.

Counting what as a unit?

If second homes and short-term rentals are counted as housing, the gap looks smaller than the market feels. In Washington County that distinction is not academic. A meaningful share of the housing stock in some communities is not occupied year-round.

Published when, and revised since?

Household estimates get restated. A figure from an older report is not wrong, it is just old, and it keeps circulating because it was memorable.

If a listing or an article cannot answer those three, the number is decoration rather than evidence.

What I actually see

Buyers who read the shortage number and conclude they have no leverage, and so stop negotiating.

That is the expensive mistake, and it is the one the figure encourages. A statewide shortage does not remove your leverage on a house that has sat for six weeks, or one with a dated kitchen, or one where the seller has already bought elsewhere. Leverage is a property-level and situation-level question. The statewide number tells you nothing about it.

The sellers’ version is believing the shortage means they can skip preparation and pricing discipline. Why a home is not getting offers is almost never about the statewide supply picture.

What to do next

If you want the current figure, go to the Gardner Institute directly rather than taking it from a news summary or a listing. Note the base year and whether the number is cumulative or annual, and you will immediately understand why the figure you remember is different.

Then ignore it for your own purchase, and get specific. The number that matters to you is what one house is worth, which is a comparable-sales question.

I am Kelsey Earl, a Realtor with Keller Williams South Valley, and clients bring me this number more than almost any other statistic. Send me the address you are weighing and we will look at what the comparables say instead.

Note: no single shortage figure is asserted here. Published estimates from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute have varied by year and method, and the range stated above reflects figures that have appeared in their reporting and in coverage of it rather than one current measurement. Go to gardner.utah.edu for the current report and its stated method.