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Taylor Anderson is a journalist. He tracks Utah's housing market, which is really weird right now. Scruy, as he put it, as you'll hear. If you just take his own experience looking for a house, you'll see what he means. Because he and his wife went through all of these shifts over the years from the time when there were these rock bottom interest rates and a wave of people moving into the state

that heated up the market and competition got intense, buyers were in bedding wars, and then

interest rates started to spike and everything changed. And meanwhile, the rental market was moving

to a massive wave of new apartment construction has added thousands of units, and in some areas,

rent is starting to cool. And for Taylor, his experience reveals that contradiction that

defines this moment, a system that feels like it's shifting underneath everyone.

I moved here January of 2017 for work, and a friend who moved here before I did bought a place.

When I was talking to him, I was like, you're crazy.

Who can afford to buy a house?

And he said, actually, in Salt Lake, it's cheaper to buy a house than it is to rent.

And it was true at the time in 2017.

It was less expensive to pay a mortgage each month than it was to pay the area cost of rent.

So we bought a place in Salt Lake City's Liberty Wells neighborhood.

Everybody knew each other, which was great.

But in March of 2020, COVID was shocking the U.S. and the world, and we abruptly shifted

from working in office every day to working at home.

And that paired with a decision to start having kids,

we kind of realized that something had to give and we needed more space.

So that sent us on a search for a bigger house.

Between 2021 and 2022, when the real estate market in Salt Lake City and across the country was hotter than it ever has been in history and probably ever will be since, we made, I'm guessing, 15 offers, many of them over asking price.

And we got outbid on almost every one of them.

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