Best Places to Buy Rental Property in Utah (2026)
Six Utah cities ranked by asking rental yield, from 4.9 percent in Cedar City to 3.4 percent in Salt Lake City, using tracked home sales and rental listings; geographic coverage explained below.
Gross asking rental yields range from 3.4 percent in Salt Lake City to 4.9 percent in Cedar City across the 6 Utah markets shown, a spread of 1.5 points. Compare purchase prices alongside property expenses and rental demand rather than treating the highest ratio as a recommendation. The rental mix matters. In Salt Lake City the house median asking rent is $2,595 against $1,750 for all listings. That gap belongs in a house-to-house comparison, house rent against house sale prices, not on top of the mixed-sale ratio in the table. Volume and yield part ways: Saint George closes about 167 homes a month, more than any other city here, and ranks fourth on yield at 4.6 percent.
The ranking
| # | City | Gross yield | Median asking rent | Rentals (12 mo) | Median closed price | Closings | Sales window | Confirmed-close median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cedar City | 4.9% | $1,598 | 754 | $389,950 | 308 | 6 months | n/a |
| 2 | Ogden | 4.9% | $1,500 | 1,924 | $370,000 | 227 | 6 months | n/a |
| 3 | Washington | 4.7% | $2,095 | 731 | $529,990 | 529 | 6 months | n/a |
| 4 | Saint George | 4.6% | $2,000 | 1,451 | $524,450 | 1,002 | 6 months | n/a |
| 5 | Hurricane | 4.6% | $1,900 | 496 | $499,900 | 313 | 6 months | n/a |
| 6 | Salt Lake City | 3.4% | $1,750 | 7,158 | $619,950 | 386 | 6 months | n/a |
City by city
1. Cedar City, 4.9 percent gross
The numbers: $389,950 median closed price across 308 closings, $1,598 median asking rent across 754 listings, 4.9 percent gross. Houses there closed at about $207 per square foot. The Cedar City market page carries the monthly figures.
2. Ogden, 4.9 percent gross
At $370,000 to buy and $1,500 a month to rent, Ogden yields 4.9 percent gross on 227 tracked closings. The Ogden market page carries the monthly figures.
3. Washington, 4.7 percent gross
The numbers: $529,990 median closed price across 529 closings, $2,095 median asking rent across 731 listings, 4.7 percent gross. Houses there closed at about $273 per square foot. Full detail is on the Washington market page.
4. Saint George, 4.6 percent gross
Homes in Saint George closed at a median of $524,450 over the last six months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $2,000, a gross yield of 4.6 percent. Houses there closed at about $263 per square foot. The Saint George market page carries the monthly figures.
5. Hurricane, 4.6 percent gross
The numbers: $499,900 median closed price across 313 closings, $1,900 median asking rent across 496 listings, 4.6 percent gross. Houses there closed at about $277 per square foot. The Hurricane market page carries the monthly figures.
6. Salt Lake City, 3.4 percent gross
Homes in Salt Lake City closed at a median of $619,950 over the last six months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $1,750, a gross yield of 3.4 percent. Houses there closed at about $384 per square foot. See the Salt Lake City page for the property mix and the price band.
How this ranking is built
- •Cities: every Utah city where Resideline tracked at least 100 closings inside the municipal boundary in its reporting window (six or twelve months) and at least 50 rental listings under the city's name since October 3, 2025: 6 cities qualify.
- •Prices: the median price homes closed at inside the city limits, from Resideline's tracked closings; the state comparison uses the statewide median of $519,000 across 7,554 closings.
- •Rents: the median advertised rent on rental listings Resideline tracked in the last twelve months, all property types, measured on the listings that carry the city's name (a postal footprint, wider than the city line in some places).
- •Confirmed-close medians: Observed rent blends two kinds of record: confirmed lease closes extracted from property records, and the final asking rent on listings that left Resideline tracking without a recorded close. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed closes in the window, their median is printed beside the asking figure; in the last twelve months about a quarter of Resideline's close episodes are confirmed closes. The asking and confirmed-close samples are separate, not paired, so a difference between their medians is not a measured gap on the same listings.
- •What is missing: taxes, insurance, vacancy, management and repairs, which turn a gross yield into a net one, and the unit mix, which differs between what sells and what rents.
Sources and related pages
- •Resideline tracked closings inside city limits (window per city, updated October 4, 2026) and rental listings since October 3, 2025; confirmed lease closes extracted from property records.
- •More Utah rankings: Cheapest cities to buy a house in Utah ranks the same kind of list with each city's price per square foot for houses, realized appreciation and days to contract beside the median, and Cap Rate by City ranks the Utah cities Resideline tracks by gross rental yield. The Utah housing market hub carries the statewide figures and the largest Utah markets by closings.
- •Asking rent vs observed rent compares live asking rents with final asking rents under that study's own definition; it says nothing about confirmed lease closes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Utah city has the highest asking rental yield?
Cedar City, at 4.9 percent: a median asking rent of $1,598 against a median closed price of $389,950, on 308 closings and 754 rental listings. Rents and sales are separate samples, so the ratio is a screen rather than a guaranteed return on a given home.
Does the cheapest Utah city also have the highest asking rental yield?
No. Ogden is the cheapest at $370,000 but ranks second on the ratio; Cedar City leads because its asking rent is high relative to its price. The ratio is a screen, not a matched property yield.
Are these asking rents or confirmed lease closes?
The yield column uses the median asking rent on tracked listings. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed lease closes in the window, the table also shows their median, so you can see how far asking sits from closes there. Resideline's close records blend confirmed closes with final asking rents on listings that left tracking, and about a quarter of the last twelve months are confirmed closes.
How many Utah cities qualify?
Six, each with at least 100 tracked closings inside the city limits and 50 rental listings in the last twelve months.
About the author
Jeffrey Batista
Jeffrey Batista is the founder of Resideline, a real estate technology company building institutional grade valuation and investment analysis tools for real estate investors.
A software engineer with more than 10 years of experience, Jeffrey has worked across full stack development, infrastructure, data engineering, machine learning, and large scale systems. He left his engineering career to build Resideline full time.
Jeffrey is also a real estate investor with nearly a decade of hands on experience buying, renovating, managing, and analyzing residential properties. His experience on both sides of the industry, as an engineer and an investor, led him to build Resideline after seeing how fragmented and outdated many of the tools available to individual investors were.
Today, he leads the development of Resideline's proprietary data infrastructure, automated valuation models, rental analytics, and investment underwriting technology.
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