West Lehi Costs Less Right Now. The Reason Has a Completion Date.

Drive 2100 North on a weekday morning and you will not mistake it for a finished road. The frontage lanes are narrowed around equipment. A wide strip of grass down the center, unused for years while the state banked the right of way, is now a active work zone. Crews have already had to reroute a stretch of the Jordan River Trail to keep it open during construction, and residents near the corridor have reported construction noise carrying into the evening since work began this spring.

None of that is a defect. It is a $621 million freeway project doing exactly what it was funded to do. But it is also, right now, the single biggest reason West Lehi looks like a bargain compared to the east side of the same city, and most people shopping that gap are pricing it as if the construction zone is permanent instead of dated.

One median, two very different housing stories

Lehi's citywide median sale price was cited at $585,000 in January 2026, up roughly 10.5 percent year over year. More recent monthly closings have run closer to $625,000, with unsold inventory asking near $594,995. Those are real numbers, and they are also close to useless on their own, because Lehi stopped being one housing market some time ago.

The city now behaves like two submarkets stitched together by a shared zip code. East Lehi, the side built up first around Thanksgiving Point, Traverse Mountain, and the original Silicon Slopes office corridor, is the established, convenience-oriented half: shorter drives to I-15, a mature commercial core, and a housing stock that has already been through a few resale cycles. West Lehi is the growth half, still absorbing new subdivisions, still platting lots, and currently absorbing years of freeway construction along its main east-west artery.

A single blended median cannot describe both of those conditions honestly. It tells you what the average buyer paid across the whole city last month. It does not tell you why a well-priced home in a fast-moving subdivision closes in three weeks while a similarly sized home two miles away sits for months, or why the exact same square footage costs more on one side of I-15 than the other.

What's actually under construction right now

The project responsible for that West Lehi softness has a name, a budget, and a finish line. UDOT broke ground on the 2100 North Expressway on March 18, 2026, a 2.8-mile freeway-to-freeway connection linking I-15 to the Mountain View Corridor. The build includes 14 new bridges, two pedestrian bridges, and nearly two miles of new shared-use path, with construction expected to continue through late 2028. Once open, UDOT's own traffic engineers estimate the connection will save east-west commuters roughly 12 minutes in each direction during peak travel.

That is not a rounding error for anyone who currently drives Redwood Road or Pioneer Crossing to get across town. It is also, for the next two years, a source of real friction for anyone living near the corridor. The existing 2100 North frontage roads stay open during construction, but detours, equipment noise, and a rerouted section of the Jordan River Trail are part of daily life in the immediate area until the work wraps.

The math almost nobody runs correctly

Here is the part that gets missed. A buyer standing in front of a West Lehi listing today is weighing a cost they can see, hear, and drive through against a benefit that does not arrive until 2028. Visible, present-tense inconvenience tends to get weighted far more heavily than a documented, dated improvement two years out, even when the improvement is the more consequential number over a normal ownership horizon.

That mismatch is showing up in the data, but not as a collapse. New construction single-family homes in Lehi were running around $187 per square foot as of May 2026, still higher than Eagle Mountain's $166 and only slightly below Saratoga Springs' $193. If West Lehi's construction exposure were a genuine, permanent knock against the area, you would expect it to trade at a discount to its immediate west-county neighbors instead of holding a premium over one of them. It isn't. What you are seeing instead is a market pricing in temporary disruption on top of an otherwise durable location, which is a different thing than pricing in a permanent problem.

Product still matters more than which side of the freeway a home sits on. A finished basement added a median $160,000 to Lehi home values in the same May 2026 data set, which is a bigger swing than most buyers will find between comparable East and West listings. That is worth remembering before anyone treats "West Lehi" as a single discounted category. Builders active in the newer western subdivisions, including Edge Homes and Century Communities, are still producing everything from $450,000 townhomes to $1.2 million-plus custom builds on view lots, the same spread you would find on the east side.

The bet extends past the freeway

The freeway is not the only long-horizon argument for West Lehi. Texas Instruments now operates two of its seven company-wide facilities in the city, one already producing semiconductors and a second currently under construction, tied to a reported $11.5 billion investment in the state. Lehi's director of economic development, Marlin Eldred, has described at least 800 jobs already committed to the new plant, with secondary suppliers to Texas Instruments actively scouting Lehi and the surrounding area as a result.

That matters because it decouples West Lehi's future from a single infrastructure project. A finished freeway is a one-time event. A semiconductor manufacturing base with hundreds of committed jobs and known suppliers still arriving is a recurring source of housing demand that does not depend on 2100 North opening on schedule, even though the two developments happen to be converging on the same side of the city at roughly the same time.

What this means if you're comparing sides this fall

If your time horizon on a purchase is three years or longer, the construction-phase discount in parts of West Lehi is closer to a countdown than a permanent price break, and the exit date is public record. If a daily detour and construction noise through 2028 is a dealbreaker regardless of the math, that is a legitimate reason to weight East Lehi more heavily even at a higher price per square foot.

Either way, stop comparing citywide averages and start comparing subdivisions. Fast-moving communities have kept selling close to list price and quickly regardless of which side of I-15 they sit on, while slower-moving pockets, often ones priced against older peak-era comparables, have taken much longer. The Alpine School District is also in the middle of a boundary reshuffle tied to Lehi's new high school split between Lehi High, Skyridge High, and Westlake High, so confirm current assigned schools for any specific address before treating a purchase as locked to a particular school.

A few questions worth asking before you write an offer

Will construction affect my daily commute if I buy in West Lehi now? Yes, through the targeted completion window in late 2028. Expect ongoing lane shifts, detours, and periodic trail closures near the 2100 North corridor until the freeway connection opens.

Is West Lehi cheaper across every price band? No. Custom and semi-custom homes on the Traverse Mountain bench or with lake views still run $1.2 million and up regardless of side. The price gap shows up more in mid-tier detached homes and townhome product, where East Lehi's established convenience commands a clearer premium.

Does the Texas Instruments investment change how I should think about the freeway timeline? It adds a second growth driver that doesn't depend on the road finishing. A freeway is a single infrastructure event with a start and end date. A semiconductor manufacturing base with hundreds of committed jobs and suppliers still arriving is a recurring source of demand on its own.

Lehi rewards buyers who compare the right things: subdivision against subdivision, product against product, and a dated construction timeline against a documented completion benefit, not a citywide average against a gut feeling about orange cones. If you want help running that comparison against your own budget and timeline, Adam Frenza has been tracking Wasatch Front growth corridors like this one for close to two decades. Let's connect.