What the "experts" are missing

The temperature is nice:

What if I told you that the temperature of the United States was 70 degrees today so dress appropriately. You do live in the United States correct? This has been the problem with the housing guru's featured on national and even local media programs, they keep giving us the forecast and the condition of the United States. All real estate is local, even within the local market real estate is local. There are areas where prices are going down right now in Salt Lake County as well as areas where prices are strong and expected to keep rising by as much as 10%.

Zoom in:

Taking the average and median home price for the state of Utah can give us a vague idea as to what is happening in our state but unless you look closely at the data it isn't really saying much.
We had some builder irresponsibility here in Utah and many builders begin flooding the market with high end homes. One of the primary factors in Utah is afford ability. We are known here for our quality of living and our sense of community not necessarily for our top wages. When the mortgage industry began to mature and learn from it's mistakes in lending, it put these high priced homes further out of reach. We are sitting on an abundance of inventory in the high end being about $500,000 and above for most areas. If those homes are not selling it really begins to affect our averages and makes it appear as if prices are dropping when in fact in most zip codes they are not. Home prices are still gradually rising under $400,000 in the majority of the state right now.

What are current market conditions?

If you really want to know the current market conditions you need to turn to a Realtor® instead of a news anchor for information. You should find out what the market is doing in YOUR price range where YOU are shopping or in YOUR neighborhood where YOU are selling. This is really the only way to truly look at the current real estate market conditions.