For $1 and a chance to win a virtual tour of Scipio, answer this: What’s losing money faster than a restaurant, bar, theater, or concert venue? UTA (the Utah Transit Authority)!  Why? Because COVID-19 has changed the way people move around from home to work, work to pleasure, from here to there.  Ridership this year is down almost 60% compared to before the virus came raging through our state. UTA itself did a survey as to why people weren’t getting on the bus/light rail/commuter trains and guess again what they found out? No big stretch for an answer-55% of those polled said they are working out of their homes now.  I can say as a real estate broker that this same fact is one of the reasons real estate sales are smoking hot. Folks are working, and will be working, at home and want space in their homes to have an office separate from typing on their laptop in bed and who want to stop renting and buy a first home or a bigger home/condo than where they are living now. The other big ish for people is safety-is public transportation safe to ride during a pandemic? My friends in my homes state of New York are very reluctant to hop on a subway there just as riders here aren’t sure buses are clean.  I did serve for two years on the UTA Board and had the opportunity to go behind the scenes where they clean the buses and trains and even got to drive a TRAX train in their training lot.  Every vehicle is cleaned and sanitized every night anyway, but they’ve added additional disinfecting measures to keep riders safe, including disinfecting all vehicles, stations, and facilities daily, implementing in-app wellness checks for riders and drivers on the ‘On Demand by Via’ (kinda their UBER-like program for riders), and periodically testing vehicle surfaces using ATP monitoring to verify the effectiveness of the disinfecting on the vehicles.  Also, on buses there is a plexiglass operator barrier installed on all buses to protect the drivers as well as riders, signs on buses to ask riders to board from the back, riders must wear masks and drivers are all wearing masks. On TRAX and FrontRunner there are ropes or signs to designate separation between operators and the riders to promote social distancing at the stations. The UTA cops that ride along won’t physically touch tickets/passes to see if passengers aren’t ripping off the system (although the ‘free fare zone’ downtown SLC is still free). UTA drivers provide complimentary face masks on most buses and trains and some vehicles have hand sanitizers on board. Safety isn’t just for your sake, it’s for the great people who drive us around every day at UTA. I’ve met many of their employees and know the paratransit buses who help those differently abled/handicapped patrons get on and off vehicles, drive designated or requested routes are the jewels of the crown of service in our public transportation fleet. Not to worry, UTA will get through this pandemic because they know how to adapt to rapid changes in demand and will continue to keep reaching further north and south from the Capitol City to expand services for more riders as our population grows and grows.

Pity the poor real estate buyer right now in today’s insane seller’s market. I listed a home in Millcreek a few weeks back with a specific marketing strategy that ended up getting the seller 24 offers within three days. Most buyers offered slightly above asking price but there were a few wild offers with ‘escalation clauses’ up to 20% over asking. Let me back track and explain that a seller’s market is when available inventory to buy is far less than the number of buyers wanting to buy homes. It’s not an exact number but I’m seeing about half as many homes for sale right now than there would have been a year ago. And an escalation clause in a buyer’s offer to purchase reads something like… “Buyer will offer seller’s asking price, but if there are multiple offers, buyer is willing to pay X over the highest bona fide offer, not to exceed Y”.  As an example, a home is listed at $450,000. Buyer offer’s $450,000 but seller gets 6 offers. Buyer’s escalation clause says that buyer will pay $1500 over the highest offer seller gets, not to exceed a sales price of $475,000.” The escalation clause doesn’t guarantee the buyer will win the battle for the home because the seller has free will to accept whatever offer they want.I have seen sellers accept lower offers because they were charmed by a letter the potential buyer(s) wrote to the seller or because they knew the buyer. What I am seeing more often is that the cash buyer is beating out all other buyers these days, especially cash buyers who write contracts with no contingencies.  What are purchase contract contingencies?  To paraphrase, there are three contingencies or protections built into the real estate purchase contract used by the Utah Association of REALTORSBuyer’s right to have the property inspected by anyone they choose and buyer can cancel the contract without penalty by a certain date;Buyer’s right to cancel the contract if the property does not appraise for the purchase price without penalty;Buyer’s right to cancel if buyer’s loan is denied by the lender. Cash buyers are often ‘flippers’ who intend to purchase, updated and sell/flip the home for a large profit. Savvy cash buyers will present offers with NO contingencies and offer a fast closing to the seller. If you currently own you probably get dozens of post cards per week that offer to ‘Buy your home for cash!’  Beware of those offers because many of their strategies is to get you to accept their offer and then will have the home ‘inspected’ and come back and tell you there’s a ton wrong with the home. And if you still want them to buy you will have to discount your price to get your money fast. These kind of flippers take advantage of people facing foreclosure and find them in public records of foreclosure notices. Whether you’re a buyer or seller in this real estate market know you need a strategy and call a

If you don’t know by now, I’m a bona fide history geek. I LOVE, when I’m getting ready to list a really old home, I do research to see if there’s some tidbit about the original owners that might give a smile to a potential buyer or even imply there may be ghosts in the proverbial closets.  Maybe it was the original house of Brigham Young’s third wife’s shoemaker, or the site of the stable where cannibal Porter Rockwell kept his horses. I’ve listed the home of Earl Glade, the longest serving mayor of SLC during wartime and helped turn KSL into a commercial arm of the LDS Church by broadcasting from his home on Highland Drive. I represented the estate of the late Edie Roberson in the Avenues where she created her fanciful art, and I was happy to point out hidden permanent art she had made part of the home.And as of last week, I’ve been appointed to serve on the Historic Landmarks Commission for Salt Lake City where I will volunteer with fellow commissioners to help determine if a property is worth saving or can be demolished. I served eight years as a Planning and Zoning Commissioner for my city and now I look forward to helping sort out property issues again. Old buildings, no matter what their condition have been a witness to the history of not just the owners but of time and connects us to the past. I feel they etch a sense of place that cannot be replaced by stucco boxes. When we save historic properties we save a piece of our culture, our cities soul.I picked up clients the other day to see condos downtown, and they pointed out what they thought was the ugliest sky scraper in Salt Lake-the vacant Public Safety building on the corner of 200 S. and 300 East. It sits tagged and run down and had several unsheltered people sleeping in the alcove of the front entry. They think it should be torn down. Built in 1958 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011, it is considered as one of the finest ‘Corporate International Style’ buildings’ west of the Mississippi. It was originally erected by Northwest Pipeline and built by contractors Del Webb and had new (at the time) heat resistant glass and aluminum louvers to shade windows on the south and west sides and was built of steel produced by Geneva Steel in Lehi. It will take millions of dollars to remove the asbestos from inside and millions to remodel /update it for commercial or possibly low income housing, but the owner (Salt Lake City Corp) has not announced any plans since ideas were presented to the public in 2015. Should we preserve this building? A building of the same era (1955)  was saved from the wrecking ball on Main and 400 South in 2007, rehabilitated and updated and now is owned by the Ken Garff Group. So, would you save the old ‘cop shop’?

If you’re lucky (or unlucky) enough to receive unemployment benefits form the State of Utah hopefully you know that you can apply for rental assistance through the Utah Department of Workforce Services/Homeless Prevention Plan. It’s hard to keep track of what help is available out there given 45 signing documents that may not hold up in court and a Congress who can’t seem to figure out much of anything. We do know that the $600 unemployment checks ran out and people are in danger of not being able to pay rent. The Emergency Assistance program through the State can help folks who don’t have enough money to prevent becoming homeless or having utilities shut off by giving money for rent/mortgage and or/utilities.  There are EIGHT conditions that must be met to get help:The family must have lost their home or be about to lose their home or their utilities because they have past-due payments that resulted from an event (a crisis) that happened beyond the control of the family.The family must be able to keep their housing or utilities or find new housing with a single rent, deposit, mortgage, or utility payment.The family must show how it will make past due payments and pay future months’ rent, mortgage, or utility payments after the crisis has been solved.The family must have already tried all other means of getting the money to pay or tried to set up a repayment plan.The value of all the household assets and things the family owns cannot be more than $2000.00. These include assets and possessions that are immediately available to the family members.The household’s total income per month cannot be more than 185% of the Standard Needs Budget (SNB), based on the household’s size. Click here to review the income limits.The payment is available once in a 12 month period.The household must have at least one dependent child who is under 18 living in their home.   You can apply at a Workforce Service location in the State or talk to nonprofit dealing with housing issues like the YWCA, Shelter the Homeless, Community Development Corp., etc.  Better yet, use the 211 hot line for Essential Community Services. It’s a free phone number like 911 but will help you find services and is especially good if you are elderly, disabled, don’t speak English as a primary language, are new to the area. The information and referral service was set up a few years ago and is priceless and works in EVERY state in the U.S. to help you find resources for housing assistance and emergency housing as well as a myriad of other services.  Help is just a phone call away and cross your fingers that more will come from Congress soon!

As a licensed broker in Utah I can sell any property any where in the state. Most agents are members of one Board of Realtors, but I am lucky enough to belong to both the Salt Lake Board and the Washington County Boards and just listed a home in Sun River in Bloomington. On my travels south to meet with the family I stopped to see my friend Julie who owns a flower shop in the old part of downtown Hurricane. I hadn’t been to that place in decades and thought for sure I had gone the wrong way from St. George to Hurricane because as soon as I headed out of one place I was at a Walmart and wall to wall housing! The patio-home retirement lifestyle has pushed out of St. George and is quickly eating up developable land like. The buzz tho among locals is not so much the growth of homes but a new type of temporary housing that has been quietly and now loudly coming to private property nearby. Many folks who travel to Zion National Park come through Hurricane and stay there because hotel and motel options are few and far between outside of the park. And if you don’t want walls there are glamping options at Zion Ponderosa Ranch and Moonlight Oasis in the area. The quiet beauty of the area is a treasure to locals and travelers alike and we’ve done a great job letting people know about our parks and landscapes so that now visiting them can be a nightmare of traffic and overcrowding. Glamping resorts are popping up to meet demand but one project called ‘Above Zion’ is being proposed on 1,700 acres in and around Kolob Reservoir and Kolob Creek, which could host up to 4,000 people at a time IF their game plan of 2,000 sites comes to fruition He wants to offer glamping sites, RV pads and primitive sites for more tourists to come to Southern Utah and to do so will have to bring in utilities, water and sewer as well as roads to his various planned locations. Locals have gotten wind of the plans and are justly concerned what such massive development will do to the roads, water system and ecosystems/nature in general. There has been one meeting already with local officials but there were so many people who wanted to chime in they had to end the meeting to regroup later. Above Zion’s owners will have to get a conditional-use permit issued from the local Planning and Zoning Commission to build what they need to get glampers up and above Zion to see the wonders of Kolob. It’s not a year round access area due to the high altitude (8000+ feet above sea level) and winter snows but it is a great place for night sky watching. Kolob is a star or planet described in the Book of Abraham, a Latter Day Saint text that was supposedly translated from an Egyptian papyrus scroll by Joseph Smith-and you might be able to see it if you look hard enough when you camp or maybe glamp up there this summer.