Back at Wood’s home, his granddaughter hopes to own a house someday, likely a year after her baby is born. Wood says he and his wife would help her look for places and pitch in on the down payment if needed. Such family support might be the only way out of doubling up for many in Utah

but Salt Lake City’s cost of living is 16 percent lower than in Denver, 37 percent lower than Seattle’s and 48 percent under San Francisco’s, according to PayScale. The state — often led personally by Governor Gary Herbert — pitches its advantages well to firms considering relocation, says Joe Vranich, whose consulting firm helps small businesses looking to move. “They will roll out the carpet for you and treat you like a king.” The approach is working. Utah’s “Silicon Slopes”

“Salt Lake City could be a next California,”

Statewide home values climbed 14 percent over the past year, nearly double the growth rate of U.S. home rates at 8 percent, according to real estate website Zillow. Utah’s household income is rising at 0.4 percent annually, while housing prices are increasing much faster at 3.3 percent, according to the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute

The state’s population grew by 14.4 percent over the past eight years, faster than any other state, according to Census Bureau population estimates. And that’s increasingly because of migration, which contributed 43 percent to the state’s population growth between 2015 and 2018, compared to 16 percent in the previous four-year period