(Salt Lake City, UT) — The cost of buying a home in Utah continues to climb. A new Bankrate study indicates that the cost of home ownership in Utah has gone up by 44 percent–the nation’s largest increase. The national average cost of maintaining a home over one year is more than 18-thousand dollars, an increase of 26 percent over the last four years. In 2020, Utah’s costs were cheaper than most of the country at just thirteen thousand dollars. These costs have jumped to 19-thousand. The most expensive states for these hidden home costs are California and Hawaii at approximately 29-thousand dollars annually. Kentucky checks in with the cheapest home-associated costs of just eleven thousand five hundred dollars.