“Housing market softens” was our No. 2 story last year. But that was before we knew how much softer an industry the entire county had come to rely on heavily could get. In 2008, sales volume slumped yet again, spec homes sat empty across the Tooele Valley, contractors scrambled to find work, and many real estate agents went idle, waiting for a rebound.

The decline was a dizzying fall from the heights of the county’s housing boom in 2006 — a year in which 1,222 single-family homes sold countywide at a total dollar volume of $213 million, according to statistics from the Wasatch Front Regional Multiple Listing Service. Compare that with the 602 homes sold at a total dollar volume of $121 million through the first three quarters this year, and you get a sense of how far the market has dropped.

And it wasn’t just the resale market that was down. New home construction fell across the county, with the Tooele County Engineering Department issuing only 138 single-family residential building permits in 2008, compared to 221 such permits issued in 2007 — a drop of 38 percent.

The building bust was even worse in Tooele City, which issued only 79 building permits in 2008 compared to 150 in 2007 — a 47 percent drop. In the city’s case, that was the lowest level of residential building activity in more than a decade.

The market also failed to soak up new inventory over 2008. Grantsville’s new luxury housing subdivision known as Silver Fox Estates had 37 homes, each priced over $300,000, sitting unoccupied at one point this year.

Even when homes did sell, they spent much longer on the market. The average number of days a house was on the market doubled from 44 in the third quarter of 2007 to 89 in the third quarter of 2008. Some sellers even pulled homes off the market to wait for better times ahead.

Most industry analysts pegged the fall of the housing market to the national economic recession, a subprime mortgage crisis that led to tighter lending standards, and a recent run-up in supply and prices that could not continue forever.

Many real estate brokers, however, blamed the news media for talking down the market with overly negative reports. The Utah Association of Realtors launched a public relations campaign that advised potential buyers to contact a Realtor if they wanted to understand the true state of the housing market.

Whatever the ultimate causes of the slump, its impact was widespread. As the year went on, subcontractors and tradesmen — a substantial portion of the county’s workforce — began finding jobs much harder to come by. And some real estate agents reported falling back on second jobs or leaving the industry altogether.

Still, amid a down year, two bright spots emerged in the local market.

First, homes appeared to be holding their values. Through the first three quarters of 2008, the average sales price of a Tooele County home was $201,826, down only 2.4 percent from an average price of $206,714 in 2007.

Second, the Tooele County market was actually much less hard hit than other housing markets across the West. An outbreak of foreclosures in cities like Denver and Las Vegas — and to a lesser extent along the Wasatch Front — didn’t spread to Tooele County.

Kelly Matthews, chief economist for Wells Fargo & Company in Salt Lake City, said that as mortgage rates continue to fall, home prices will likely drop statewide in 2009.

“I’m sure we will start to see a reduction in home prices on into 2009,” he said.

Doug Radunich: dougrad@tooeletranscript.com