It’s a fact that it’s hard to find a place to rent these days. St. George is virtually OUT of rentals, and despite all the high rises going up in SLC, we too have a huge shortage of housing. You may not have ever heard of the Utah Apartment Assn. unless you’re a landlord. According to their website they have over 3,500 members representing more than 75,000 apartments throughout Utah. You would probably be a member if you were an owner, manager, developer or builder of apartments because they really do offer some terrific benefits to both the one and multi-unit owner.

The non-profit group was founded in 1934 as the Apartment Assn. of Utah-84 years ago. The National Apartment Association is only 75 years old which to me indicates Utah was ahead of the pack in helping to assist owners and managers in the last century here. Why would a RENTER care about this group?

1. Their website (uaagq.org) does connect you to rentals.com, forrent.com, utahrealestate.com, and rentler.com;
2. Gives help line/phone numbers for tenants having problems with landlords, including Salt Lake Community Action, 2-1-1 information, Disability Law Center and Utah State Courts;
3. Directs veterans to specific resources for them;
4. And free forms for tenants to: a) give a landlord a notice to vacate/move out, give notice of a deficient condition, a reasonable accommodation request due to health issues, and a tenant request form to the landlord to provide deposit deposition/return of deposit.

For owners currently renting out property(s) or wanting to become a landlord, they offer a live ‘Good Landlord’ class throughout the state. Not heard of that? Well, if you as a wanna be or current landlord agree to evict problem tenants immediately and keep their properties ‘clean and green’ and in compliance with local housing codes you can possibly get a discount on licensing fees. As an example, Salt Lake City will discount a participant’s business license fee from $342 per unit to $322 per unit. This incentive is intended to educate landlords on management strategies to prevent crime, maintain equity and promote compatibility with surrounding neighborhoods.

South Salt Lake City says on their website that ‘the City has found that landlords who follow best management practices on background checks, tenant leases, crime prevention, and eviction procedures as necessary reduce the service costs borne by South Salt Lake taxpayers. Like many other cities in the state, South Salt Lake requires landlords to maintain a current business license for their rental(s), attend a class every few years on being a good landlords, use a written lease for every unit they rent out with all adults living in the unit listed on the lease, that all adults will have background checks done by the landlord in advance of leasing, protocols for crime prevention on the property will be followed via ‘Crime Prevention through Environmental Design’ and that the landlord agrees to maintain the rental dwelling(s) in a fit and habitable condition as required by State and relevant building, fire and land use codes.

http://www.slcgov.com/landlord/faq

http://www.southsaltlakecity.com/department-listings/community-development/good-landlord-programhttp://www.southsaltlakecity.com/department-listings/community-development/good-landlord-program

‘How much are all those condos going for that they are building everywhere?’  ‘ALL OF THOSE ARE APARTMENTS, NOT CONDOS!’  That’s right-just about every crane and every high rise in construction is an apartment building in the Salt Lake Valley and we are in a bona fide drought for condo buyers.

Who buys condos? Well everyone of course. But the demographic has traditionally been active seniors (Boomers) downsizing from their family homes once the kids flew off to college, and, single women. I remember a developer friend told me that when he built his first condo project in the 1990’s he was surprised to sell it out to mostly women. He learned that their motivation was security that they weren’t finding in the apartment inventory at that time. They wanted a lobby that was permanently locked except to visitors owners let in and a parking garage which didn’t open without a pass card or code. This amenity has become a must in today’s projects, from video cameras to nest door knobs.

There is no way in hell that I can give you the number of apartment buildings vs condo buildings under construction or completed in the Salt Lake Valley in 2017 without moving up a pay raise here at the weekly (from free to paid!). I’d have to call every city and burb and talk to each town’s planning staff. I can give you the data from the Wasatch Front Regional MLS tho: 2003 condos were sold in Salt Lake County in 2017; 264 have sale pendings and there are 271 currently for sale.  They report that the supply of condos has been about three months-worth until there would be zero inventory.

Condos currently for sale at the end of December range from $69,900 to $2,499,000 with an average asking price of $372,206. Oddly enough, the average asking price of a condo with a sale pending was $254,441-meaning it’s the cheaper inventory that’s selling. Sales prices in 2017 were an average of $299,836 per unit.  Sadly, I can personally count less than half a dozen new condo buildings initiated or built this past year in Salt Lake City itself. Instead, thousands of new rental units have reached up to the sky as well as the rents landlords are charging for them.

Builders these days have found that condo developments are harder to finance for construction than apartments, and simpler to build when you take in the grueling process of permits, planning and zoning. All in all, the WFRMLS reported 1671 homes for sale and 271 condos for sale mid December…that’s a total of only 1942. Certainly in a county with over a million people there’s been an obvious drought of not just snow this time of year but inventory of homes and condos to buy.

The President of North Korea keeps threatening to blow up the U.S. with nuclear bombs. Are you scared we might all be glowing with radiation in the near future? Are you ready for the apocalypse?

When I was a kid the same nuclear threat occurred in 1962 during what was known as the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’. Our country feared we were all going to be vaporized in mushroom clouds from our neighbors to the south of Florida. School children like myself were drilled to protect ourselves (don’t laugh, this is real) by hiding under our desks when the school bell/alarm was set off. Nowadays I’m thinking kids do practice drills in case of a mass shooter attack, but back then we worried that an A-Bomb would go off, the roof would fall in on us and then an invisible gas called ‘radiation’ would kill us if we didn’t hide. Out teachers never spoke of guns, just bombs. Additionally, if we were able to crawl out from under our desks after the attack had begun, we were to go to the nearest “Fallout Shelter”. These hiding spaces were set up all around the country in public buildings like schools and were to serve as emergency spaces for survivors to stay in until some mysterious person would come and give the ‘all clear’ to us. Inside the shelter there would be provisions, bedding, water and medical supplies, flash lights and batteries, etc. that might last a week, a month or a year. Generally, the shelters were in basements marked by a yellow sign with three black triangles on it and the words FALLOUT SHELTER.

The man who designed/created/copyrighted that sign-Robert Blakeley-passed two weeks ago at the age of 95. This sign of the times marked an era of fear of our Cold War past that is just as real today as it was back then. However, we don’t have Fallout Shelters anymore to run to in case of foreign attack! The last four in Salt Lake City designated as community shelters were in the Masonic Temple on South Temple, The Utah State Capitol, The Pioneer Memorial Museum on 300 North and the YWCA. Yet by the 1970’s we had enough shelters to house Utah’s entire population. I called each one of them and no one I spoke with said the shelters were still available in case of attack.

In 1962 it seemed every neighbor had dug up their back yard and installed a small underground concrete bunker in case of a nuclear attack. Our family however, did not put one in. I honestly was terrified that we would thus die due to lack of planning. I asked my dad what we would do if we faced the end of the world and he said, “We’ll just use the neighbor’s shelter.” That sorta made me calmer.  Luckily the ‘crisis’ only lasted for about two weeks in and then the threat vaporized itself.

I wonder if Donald Trump drives anything but a golf cart. I’ve never seen a photo of him behind the wheel of an automobile, but then I don’t remember seeing any presidents in my life time driving and waving at a camera. The first U.S. president to ride in a car was William McKinley, who hopped aboard a steam powered auto called a ‘Stanley Steamer’ in 1899.  Automobiles were first made by hand and not on assembly lines and so they cost a ton of money to buy one. It’s reported in the annals of Utah state history that in 1909 Utah’s 370,000 residents owned only 873 cars and trucks.

            Jump ahead to 2017 and note that the Larry H. Miller Group owns and operates 54 car dealerships in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Washington and California. Wikipedia reports that 015 as of Utahns owned 745 vehicles per 1000 people in the state.  We have too many cars and according to the Utah Transit Authority only 16% of folks along the Wasatch front use public transportation.

            In my personal life I take TRAX because I live in the ‘Free Zone’ in the capitol city. Being a real estate broker I pretty much drive for a living schlepping anxious buyers hither and yon to see properties or speeding to a seller’s home to list it. I’m a great driver. I’ve never caused an accident, and luckily have only been in one minor mishap when someone rear-ended my car. I do see accidents every day and my cop friends tell me that most of those happening now are caused because people are texting and not paying attention to the road.

            Here comes summer, holidays and road trips. The insurance website QuoteWizard confirms that New Yorkers are notorious for horn honking, Los Angeles drivers are more prone to road rage than the rest of the country and Portlanders are famously slow and polite. They weighed statistics from 2016 for 75 of the largest U.S. cities as far as accidents, speeding tickets, DUI’s and other citations and found that Salt Lake City drivers were the SECOND WORST in the country.  We apparently they found that we also have the second highest rate of speeding tickets in the country. That’s only salt in the wound after Insure.com found in 2014 that Utahns are the 10^th rudest drivers in the country.  My own survey says that Utahns are probably #1 in making left hand turns from the far right hand lane without signaling, have more people in a vehicle than seat belts in the car (illegal).