The ‘mission’ (no pun intended) of a tax collector it to provide the public with fair market value of real and personal property and to comply with local laws per that county and our state have enacted to set up a taxing system.  We can be taxed on our real estate holdings, mobile homes, air craft, motor vehicles and property used in the operation of a business. In Utah, property tax notices go out mid to late summer for you to review and accept/pay or protest.  School districts in the state take up almost 60% of tax revenues collected in the state. Your County Assessor’s computers determine a property’s value and if it’s residential the owner will automatically get a 45% deduction from their home value to determine the taxable rate, which means you pay taxes on 55% of your home’s value.  We are blessed with a relatively low tax rate here. BUT be glad you don’t live in say, Los Angeles where as of last April high end homes are now subject to a ‘mansion tax’ that levies a fee on transfers of real property that sell for over $5 million. Revenue from the tax will fund affordable housing and services to combat homelessness in the city.

We don’t have transfer taxes in Utah. The story I was told when I got my real estate license years ago that we as REALTORS made a deal with the Tax Assessors to give them sales data each year so that the Assessor could calculate property taxes in exchange for not levying transfer taxes on the sale of land, homes, condo, commercial buildings and multiplexes. This tax has nothing to do with capital gains taxes on profits that the IRS charges.  Our legislature has not considered charging any transfer tax in some time and well, there’s an argument for and against them on both sides of politics to either keep taxes low or tax more and give the funds to worthy causes like funding homelessness programs.

As you can imagine many California millionaires are challenging this transfer tax in the courts and there are huge arguments if this kind of tax will have any effect on the local economy. Some say it will have zero impact and others say that L.A. is going to lose millions of dollars in revenues. Wealthy homeowners and buyers are just like anyone else-they want to pay the least amount of taxes and save as much money as possible when selling a property. Some sellers who thought of asking $5,025,000 might list their home instead for $5 mil just to avoid the taxes which will unfairly effect comparable sales. Some think that this kind of tax will discourage flippers and speculators. We shall see.

MORE INFO ABOUT YOUR PROPERTY TAX: www.slco.org or call 385-468-8000 or call your local assessor 4info!

It’s hard to say IT’S SPRING when it just keeps snowing and snowing!  If you live in the Salt Lake Valley, you probably don’t have much stacked up on your yard but in the benches homes that face north still have up to a foot in some places. Then there’s all the snow in the canyons, Park City, Cache Valley, etc. We’re breaking records for snowfall left and right and when this stuff does melt some folks are going to be dealing with ice dams, water damage and mold.

During and after a snowfall, the snow on your roof can be warmed two ways leading directly to the snow melting: One way is through the sun’s rays which are refracted through ice crystals of the snowflakes that have collected on your home’s roof creating warmth and melting the snow. The other way is through the heat from the inside of your home escaping through the attic and it’s vents and warming your roof. When this snowmelt reaches your home’s cold gutters it can freeze into ice. This ongoing process of thawing and refreezing creates ice dams in your gutters. These dams can cause water to back up under the shingles of your roof or behind the fascia boards where it can lead to damage to the roof decking, wall sheathing or the ceilings and walls of your attic.

Ice dams can cause awful problems and cost a ton of money to fix. The absolute worst thing you can hear in your home or apartment is the sound of running water, a sound you didn’t cause by turning on a tap. If the water gets under your shingles it will pool in the attic and then run down your walls or inside your walls and could end up in your basement. The scary part is that you might not hear the water melting until it’s too late, when your ceiling can fall in on you. It starts as a bubble in the paint which can grow to a huge bubble before it pops and then woe and behold attic insulation and sheetrock come tumbling down onto the floor. Or it travels inside the walls and you find your basement has water in it from the roof dam. It can happen slowly or quickly depending on the outside temperatures and weather conditions.

The longer the melting water runs into your home, the more damage it will cause. Almost immediately mold will start to grow in any warm area of the home that the moisture touches. Mold can lead to serious breathing and health problems and many times isn’t discovered until it’s done havoc to your home.

If you see a large bunch of icicles hanging from sections of your gutter knock them down. You can also add insulation and heating wires on your roof and in your gutters to eliminate this problem.

Long story short, I was asked to tour a Japanese film crew around the Capitol City for a friend. They were here featuring a local business but wanted content about our fair city. They had already been here once before and shot film in and around Temple Square so I was responsible for suggesting places to visit off the beaten path that your typical tourist might miss. Since part of my job as a real estate broker is to tour potential buyers moving to the area around it was an easy task, made easier for me as I’m the volunteer Chair of the Historic Landmarks Commission for Salt Lake City!

I picked up the crew from their hotel and lucky for me they spoke English. First stop, a drive downtown around Temple Square to explain the current scaffolding around the LDS Temple and then a photo stop at the Lion House. “Lion of the Lord” was one of Brigham Young’s nicknames, and he lived at 63 E. South Temple where he ultimately fathered 57 children by more than two dozen wives.

Next, up and around the state capitol building and then into the historic Avenues past the grand old Victorian, Federalist and Craftsman homes up to the Mid-Mod area of Pill Hill where we toured a home for sale with sweeping views of the valley where I pointed out the geographical benches (foothills), the Rio Tinto mine, Mt. Nebo (you can see it’s peak from the top of the Avenues).   Then, off to the ultimate oddity-Gilgal Sculpture Garden at 749 E. 500 So. (free). This little public park is the legacy of Thomas Child’s desire to give physical form to his deep-felt religious beliefs, and the garden contains 12 amazing stone sculptures and 70 stones engraved with scriptures, poems and philosophical tests that rang true to his spiritual quest. I had to take the immediately to see what I call ‘Mr. Brick Pants’-one of the largest sculptures in the garden, as much else was covered in snow. They ooo’d and awed and took lots of video before I shuffled them back in the car to drive them by Trolley Square (the original service barns of a long gone trolley car system in the city), Liberty Park to our final destination…the ‘World’s First Kentucky Fried Chicken’ store!

Harland Sanders created his secret recipe for fried chicken in 1940. He met Pete and Arline Harman at a convention and they made a deal to franchise Sanders restaurant at his motel in So. Carolina. The host of the program informed me that it’s tradition for Japanese to order KFC as a Christmas day delicacy in their country and they photographed the museum pieces at the flagship store at State and 3900 So. They bought swag there and we ended up at the Sun Trapp tavern as they wanted to shoot a gay bar in Utah. Fun was had by all and the show should be up in Japan soon!

 

First time buyers most likely have never seen a real estate purchase contract (called a ‘REPC’, pronounced ‘Rep-C’) but have probably heard of down payments, earnest money and closing costs. Nowadays lenders can grant you a zero-down mortgage but a seller is still going to want to see you put some skin in the game up front. That skin is called ‘earnest money’ and is really often misunderstood by both buyers and sellers. Here’s some clarification that should help:

Earnest money is considered good faith funds, money that is put down before closing escrow on a property to show the seller(s) that you’re serious about purchasing. In some states it is common to put 1% of the asking price as earnest money, whereas in Utah there is no common amount. Technically a contract doesn’t need a bunch of earnest money because a contract becomes a contract when the parties agree on terms. I certainly have written many contracts in my day that had no earnest money up front because it wasn’t required by the parties, but in reality a seller would FREAK if a buyer didn’t wiggle some funds in front of the seller up front in the negotiations.

Let’s say the purchase price is $500,000. I would suggest to a buyer to offer $10,000 earnest money. If there are multiple offers I might suggest putting the buyers cajones on the table and write in $50,000 earnest money to really show the seller how serious they are!  BUT WAIT! What if the home inspection turns out horrific and you want out of the deal. Will you lose your earnest money? Simple-if you abide by the terms of the contract you won’t lose your money.

There are four dates in a REPC that we pay attention to: 1) the seller’s disclosure to the buyer (wherein the seller gives the buyer a title report showing liens on the property, a plat map of the lot and a ‘seller’s property disclosure’ form-a 16 page ‘what do I know about my property’ form, any leases and if a condo, the budget, rules and minutes of the homeowners association), 2) the buyer’s due diligence deadline (the time the buyer has to inspect the property and go over any information the seller has provided), 3) the appraisal and loan deadline for the buyer and 4) the closing date of the sale. Home inspections can take a minute, and a normal time to complete them is about 10 -14 days. IF the buyer backs out of the contract before the 14 days, the buyer gets all their earnest money returned.  IF the property doesn’t appraise for the sales price or the buyer doesn’t get final loan approval, the buyer gets their money back.

Once the earnest money check is deposited, the money belongs to no one! It sits in escrow until the buyer fails the deal or it’s credited to the buyer at closing as part of a down payment, or returned if it’s a zero-down loan.

Did you know Utah has a Nasa Moon Tree?  Pardon me, as a tree hugger by nature I’m surprised I had never heard of this beauty in our state. “This tree has boldly gone where no trees-and few humans-have gone before”, chimed KSL a few years back. And yes, sci-fi fans love the thought of humans growing plants in space so this is a great little piece of local trivia that will help you win any local pub’s trivia night!

First, the tree is located in an exterior corner of the State Forestry Department’s Lone Peak Office at 271 Bitterbrush Lane in Draper.   Second, it’s a 52 year old sycamore tree that was planted here in 1976. Third, it’s a plant with a lot of history and fourth, it may be dead or almost dead.

In 1971 Apollo 14 blasted off from it’s launch pad and inside the cockpit one astronaut (Stuart Roosa) had a stash of tree seeds on him. Each flyer gets to carry a small personal amount of goods with them and this former Forest Service smokejumper was the perfect guy to give the seeds a ride. In his cannister there were @500 seeds-not just sycamore seeds, but hundreds of redwood, pine, fir and sweet gum seeds.  His job was to bring them home safely to earth as the Command Module Pilot after orbiting the moon (and ultimately landing on it). The great news was that most of the seeds sprouted and NASA then divvied them out to various forestry departments around the country to see what would grow and if anti-gravity would effect what they grew into. Would there be freak trees?  There aren’t any reports of odd growth that I could find.

Utah reportedly got two starts of sycamores and two of Douglas fir were planted in Utah. Utah state capitol building grounds and a local nursery. Folks around the country nicknamed them ‘moon trees’ and local interest was fairly high as to the future of these special plants. The nursery gave out cuttings and clones to its customers. Sadly, the tree at the capitol was destroyed by a freak tornado when it was split in half by the wind in August of 1999 and the other is somewhere by the old prison site in Draper by the State Forestry office out there. I wasn’t able to find out where the other two seedlings disappeared to in Utah as even the State doesn’t know where they are now and if they survived.

This past November NASA launched the Artemis rocket as part of a plan to get us back to land on and explore the moon. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has decided to reactivate the moon seed program for the future. What’s a bummer is that NASA forgot about the program for many years and lost where the trees had been planted around the country. A NASA employee was contacted by a teacher who found a plaque near a moon tree who had asked where others were planted. He had not heard of the program but ended up posting on social media asking for the public’s help finding the trees and hopefully plaques around the country. The current Moon Tree Foundation is now run by Roosa’s daughter who sees to plant moon trees around the world.