Today’s Salt Lake City Mortgage Rates
Mortgage rates as of 8/28/2026
Mortgage rates as of 8/28/2026
Salt Lake City is not a typical Utah mortgage market, and the differences are not about price. They are about property type and program eligibility. The city has the state’s largest concentration of condominiums and the lowest owner-occupancy rate on the Wasatch Front, which means a large share of purchases here run into condo project approval rather than a straightforward single-family underwrite. At the same time, Salt Lake County sits toward the bottom of Utah’s FHA limits and has a Utah Housing income cap that is lower than several suburban counties. Buyers who assume the biggest city gets the most generous programs have it backwards.
For 2026, Salt Lake County uses the national baseline conforming limit of $832,750 on a one-unit property. Twenty-five of Utah’s twenty-nine counties are at that same number. Only Summit and Wasatch ($1,150,000), Wayne ($997,050) and Grand ($839,500) sit above it, a detail worth knowing if you are also shopping a second home in Park City or Heber, where the conforming ceiling is materially higher.
FHA is where Salt Lake City buyers get squeezed. HUD sets FHA limits by metropolitan area, and each metro’s limit is driven by its highest-median county. The Ogden MSA includes Morgan County, which pulls the whole metro up. The result is a gap most buyers never hear about:
| Area | 2026 FHA limit, one unit | Difference vs. Salt Lake County |
|---|---|---|
| Ogden MSA (Davis, Weber, Morgan) | $744,050 | +$106,950 |
| Salt Lake City MSA (Salt Lake, Tooele) | $637,100 | n/a |
| Washington County (St. George) | $607,200 | −$29,900 |
| Utah County (Provo-Orem-Lehi) | $601,450 | −$35,650 |
| Cache County (Logan) | $541,287 | −$95,813 |
2026 FHA forward limits, HUD Mortgagee Letter 2025-23, effective for case numbers assigned on or after January 1, 2026.
The practical consequence: a buyer looking at a $700,000 home in Salt Lake City cannot use FHA, but the same buyer looking at a $700,000 home in Layton or Kaysville can. If your down payment is thin and your credit is the reason you were steered toward FHA, the county line genuinely changes what is available to you. Conventional 3%-down and 5%-down programs go to $832,750 in both places, so the answer is often to compare an FHA loan in Davis County against a conventional loan in Salt Lake County rather than assuming FHA is the only route. That is a comparison we run all day, call 801-576-9336 and we will price both.
This is the section that matters most for Salt Lake City and barely matters in Herriman or Syracuse. The city’s housing stock includes far more attached and multi-family product than the rest of the county, concentrated downtown, in the Central City and Granary districts, and along the redeveloped corridors near the university. If you are buying one of those units, the lender is underwriting the project before it underwrites you.
Owner-occupancy ratio. Conventional financing on a primary residence generally wants a meaningful share of units owner-occupied. Downtown buildings with heavy investor ownership or a large short-term rental presence routinely fail this test, and it is the single most common reason a Salt Lake City condo deal falls apart.
Single-entity ownership. If one owner or entity controls too large a share of the units, the project is ineligible for standard agency financing regardless of how strong your file is.
HOA reserves and the budget. Agencies expect the association to be funding reserves at an adequate level out of its regular assessments. Underfunded reserves and deferred maintenance are increasingly disqualifying, and after the national tightening on aging condo buildings, lenders look harder at structural and deferred-maintenance disclosures than they did five years ago.
Litigation. Pending construction-defect or structural litigation against the association will usually stop a conventional loan outright.
Commercial space. Many of the Salt Lake City buildings buyers like most have ground-floor retail. Too high a commercial percentage takes the project out of warrantability.
A failed project review is not the end of the purchase. As a broker we shop lenders who write non-warrantable condo financing and price it as a portfolio product rather than an agency loan. Expect a larger down payment and a rate premium over conventional, but these loans close, and for a downtown unit in a building that will never be agency-approved they are often the only realistic path. We can usually tell you within a day whether a specific building is likely to pass, which is worth knowing before you write the offer rather than three weeks into the contract.
FHA has its own condo approval process, including a single-unit approval route for individual units in otherwise unapproved projects. It is narrow and it has its own occupancy and financial tests, but it occasionally saves a deal that conventional will not touch.
Utah Housing Corporation is the state’s down payment assistance engine, and its FirstHome income limits are set county by county. Salt Lake County’s are lower than several of its neighbors, which surprises almost everyone:
| County | Income cap, 1-2 person | Income cap, 3+ person | Max purchase price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Juab, Utah | $143,000 | $166,800 | $769,100 |
| Davis, Morgan, Summit, Wasatch, Weber | $141,400 | $164,600 | $778,500 |
| Salt Lake | $126,100 | $145,000 | $666,600 |
| Tooele | $121,300 | $139,400 | $666,600 |
Utah Housing Corporation FirstHome limits as currently published. Verify at application, UHC updates these without advance notice.
Read that table again if you earn between $126,100 and $141,400 as a one-or-two-person household. You are over the FirstHome ceiling in Salt Lake City and comfortably under it in Bountiful, Layton or Ogden. Same job, same income, same loan, different county, different program.
Three programs are active: FirstHome (660 minimum score, first-time buyers, with exceptions for single parents and veterans), the FHA/VA product (620 minimum, open to repeat buyers, $165,200 income cap statewide), and Freddie Mac HFA Advantage (680 minimum, reduced mortgage insurance, up to 105% total loan-to-value).
Down payment assistance comes as a 30-year fixed second mortgage in one of two shapes. The traditional option lends up to 6% of the first mortgage, capped at $27,500, at your first-mortgage rate plus one percent with a hard cap of 8%, and it amortizes. The deferred option lends up to 3.5%, same $27,500 cap, at 3.5% deferred simple interest with no monthly payment, principal and accrued interest come due at sale, refinance or maturity. On a $400,000 purchase in Salt Lake City the traditional option can cover the full down payment and a meaningful piece of closing costs.
Worth knowing: Utah Housing currently lists HomeAgain, NoMI and Score as suspended. If you were told about one of those, that information is out of date. Call us for what is actually fundable this week. See our Utah Housing programs page for the full breakdown.
Utah exempts 45% of a primary residence’s fair market value from property tax, so you are taxed on 55% of value. The exemption covers the dwelling plus up to one acre. Salt Lake County’s 2025 average total rate was 1.0504%, the highest of Utah’s major counties.
| County | 2025 avg total rate | Annual tax on a $600,000 primary residence | Monthly escrow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salt Lake | 1.0504% | ≈$3,466 | ≈$289 |
| Davis | 1.0108% | ≈$3,336 | ≈$278 |
| Utah | 0.9621% | ≈$3,175 | ≈$265 |
| Washington | 0.7584% | ≈$2,503 | ≈$209 |
| Cache | 0.6986% | ≈$2,305 | ≈$192 |
Calculated on 55% of market value using 2025 county average total rates from the Utah State Tax Commission. Individual tax areas within a county vary. A specific address can differ meaningfully from the county average.
The Salt Lake-to-Cache spread on an identical $600,000 home is about $97 a month. That is not a rounding error in an underwriter’s debt-to-income calculation; it is roughly $20,000 of additional purchase power at current rates. When we run a pre-approval we use the actual tax area for the address rather than a county average, because in Salt Lake County the difference between tax districts is large enough to change what you qualify for.
One more point that catches people: if you buy a home that was previously a second home or a rental not qualifying for the exemption, the tax bill you see in the listing may reflect the unexempted rate. It should drop once the primary residential exemption is applied, but the timing depends on the county and you should not assume the seller’s number is your number in either direction.
Salt Lake City has genuinely old housing stock by western standards. The Avenues, Capitol Hill, Liberty Wells and parts of Sugar House are full of homes built before 1940, and that changes the loan in ways a new build in Daybreak never does.
Appraisal condition calls. Knob-and-tube wiring, original fuse panels, failing roofs, and peeling exterior paint on a pre-1978 home will generate repair conditions. On FHA in particular, a condition call has to be cleared before closing, which can stall a contract if it surfaces late.
Renovation lending. When a home needs work, an FHA 203(k) or conventional renovation loan lets you finance the purchase and the rehab in one loan, based on the after-improved value. On the east bench, where a structurally sound 1920s house with a dated kitchen sells for meaningfully less than a comparable updated one, this is often the cheaper way to end up in the house you actually want.
Unpermitted work. Finished basements and additions done without permits are common in older Salt Lake City neighborhoods. An appraiser may not give value to unpermitted square footage, which can create a gap between contract price and appraised value. Worth asking about before you write.
Non-conforming lots. Small or oddly shaped lots that predate current zoning are financeable, but the appraisal needs comparables that reflect the same situation, and a thin comp set can slow things down.
Salt Lake City has been more permissive on accessory dwelling units than most Utah cities, and buyers regularly ask whether an existing basement apartment or backyard unit helps them qualify. The answer depends on two things that have nothing to do with your credit.
First, is it legal? A permitted, legally conforming ADU that appears on the appraisal as a legal unit is treated very differently from an unpermitted basement apartment. Second, does the loan program allow the income? Some conventional programs permit a portion of documented accessory unit rental income on a one-unit property; others do not count it at all. FHA has its own treatment. The variation between programs is wide enough that the same house with the same tenant can qualify you under one program and not another.
If a property you are considering has rental income attached to it, send us the address before you write the offer. Structuring it as a one-unit-with-ADU versus a genuine two-unit purchase changes the down payment, the rate, and the amount of the rent we can use.
Utah is a comparatively cheap state to close in, and buyers relocating from California, Colorado, Nevada or Florida are usually surprised by how much smaller the closing statement is.
There is no real estate transfer tax in Utah. No documentary stamp tax, no deed tax, nothing tied to sale price. Recording is a flat per-document fee that is the same whether the home sold for $300,000 or $1.5 million. In Florida that same transaction would carry documentary stamps running into the thousands.
H.B. 38, passed in the 2026 legislative session, raised county recorder fees effective May 6, 2026, taking most Utah counties to $45 per document. Utah County publicly declined to increase and stayed at $40. Salt Lake County’s posted schedule predates the bill, so confirm the current figure with the recorder or your title company, either way it is a flat fee, not a percentage.
The costs that actually move on a Salt Lake City closing are lender fees, title insurance and prepaid escrows. Our fees run about 25% below many competitors and we charge no processing or junk fees, which on a typical purchase here is worth more than every recording fee difference in the state combined. See our no-fee mortgage page for how that works.
We finance homes across the whole city and the surrounding county: The Avenues, Capitol Hill, Marmalade, Federal Heights, Yalecrest, Harvard-Yale, Sugar House, 9th and 9th, Liberty Wells, Central City, East Central, the Granary District, Downtown, Rose Park, Poplar Grove, Glendale, Fairpark, Westpointe, Ballpark, Wasatch Hollow, Foothill, Bonneville Hills, St. Mary’s, Arcadia Heights, Sunnyside East, East Bench, Emigration Canyon, and the University and Research Park area.
Different neighborhoods raise different loan questions: the Avenues brings pre-1940 condition issues, Downtown and the Granary bring condo warrantability, Rose Park and Glendale bring first-time buyer and down payment assistance questions, and Federal Heights and Yalecrest push against the conforming ceiling into jumbo territory. We handle all of them.
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For 2026 the FHA limit on a one-unit property in Salt Lake County is $637,100. That is about $107,000 lower than the Ogden MSA limit of $744,050 that applies in Davis and Weber counties, because HUD sets FHA limits by metro area and the Ogden metro is pulled up by Morgan County. If FHA is your program and you are shopping above $637,100, it is worth comparing what the same budget buys in Davis County.
Usually, but the building has to pass project review before your loan can close. Lenders look at owner-occupancy ratio, whether any single entity owns too many units, HOA reserve funding, pending litigation, and the percentage of commercial space. Downtown buildings with heavy investor ownership frequently fail. When a project is not warrantable we place the loan with a portfolio lender that writes non-warrantable condo financing, larger down payment and a rate premium, but it closes. Send us the building address before you write an offer and we will usually know within a day.
Salt Lake County’s FirstHome income cap is $126,100 for a one-to-two-person household and $145,000 for three or more, with a maximum purchase price of $666,600. Those figures are lower than Davis, Weber and Utah counties. Down payment assistance comes as a second mortgage: up to 6% of the first mortgage amortizing, or up to 3.5% deferred, both capped at $27,500. Note that Utah Housing currently lists HomeAgain, NoMI and Score as suspended, so only FirstHome, the FHA/VA product and Freddie HFA Advantage are available.
No. Salt Lake County sits entirely inside the urbanized area and no part of it is USDA-eligible. If you want a zero-down loan in Salt Lake City, the realistic routes are a VA loan if you are eligible, or Utah Housing down payment assistance layered onto an FHA or conventional first mortgage. USDA does remain available in parts of Utah: Grantsville, Stansbury Park, Heber City and much of Box Elder County, among others.
Utah exempts 45% of a primary residence’s market value, so you are taxed on 55%. At Salt Lake County’s 2025 average total rate of 1.0504%, a $600,000 primary residence runs roughly $3,466 a year, or about $289 a month in escrow. Individual tax areas within the county vary, so we use the actual rate for your address when we pre-approve you rather than the county average.
It depends on the program. FHA can work in the 580-620 range with the right file and Utah Housing’s FHA/VA product starts at 620. Conventional financing generally prices better from about 680 up, and Utah Housing’s FirstHome requires 660 while Freddie HFA Advantage requires 680. Higher scores buy lower rates and cheaper mortgage insurance, so if you are three months from a meaningful score improvement it is often worth waiting. We will review your credit for free and tell you honestly whether waiting pays.
Above $832,750 on a one-unit property, which is the 2026 baseline conforming limit and the figure that applies in Salt Lake County. In Federal Heights, Yalecrest and parts of the east bench that threshold comes up regularly. Jumbo financing is available and competitive, but it is underwritten to tighter reserve and documentation standards, so it is worth being pre-approved on the jumbo guidelines specifically rather than assuming a conforming pre-approval carries over.
We can close in three weeks or less on a clean file. The things that extend it here are condo project review, appraisal condition calls on older east-side homes, and unpermitted square footage that needs to be reconciled. All three are predictable, which is why we flag them before you are under contract rather than after.
At Axent Funding we take pride in our great customer service. Our staff is here for you, so don’t hesitate to contact us if you have a question, a problem, or a suggestion.
We are a Utah mortgage broker offering conventional, FHA, Utah Housing / no down payment, VA, jumbo and home equity lines, plus niche products for condotel, one-time close construction, home remodel, reverse mortgage and debt consolidation. See Loan Types for the full list.
We walk you through the whole mortgage process and make sure your transaction closes smoothly. We can close a loan in 3 weeks or less.
Every loan program we offer, described side by side, so you can see which one fits.
Payment, affordability, amortization, refinance break-even and bi-weekly payoff.
Loan limits, Utah Housing caps, property tax and USDA coverage, county by county.
Axent Funding is licensed statewide and closes loans in every Utah county. We publish in-depth local guides for the markets we work in most: loan limits, Utah Housing eligibility, property tax and USDA coverage all change at the county line.