Salt Lake City Explodes with Growth

        

The Salt Lake City area has been growing for decades. And why not, it’s a nice place to live and a great place to raise a family, plus it’s one of the best recreational cities in the country.

But the area is no longer just growing- it is exploding!

Here are some of the major developments happening right now or in the very near future;

Valley Fair Mall remodel– Scott Satterfield and Greg Helm of Satterfield Helm Management have bought West Valley City’s Valley Fair Mall at 3500 South and 2700 West and plan to spend more than $50Million renovating it into an open-air mall. Costco has already signed on as an anchor tenant and many businesses have expressed interest. That entire area has seen a lot of expansion in the last few years with the E-Center, Hollywood Connection entertainment complex and the dozens of restaurants, hotels and stores being built.

Kennecott Land Development– Kennecott Land plans to develop more than 80,000 acres of land along Salt Lake’s west bench over the next 20-50 years. It’s first development, Daybreak, is 4126 acres of parks, trails, a private man-made lake, and open space and will have 13,000 homes, 5.2 million SF of office space, 2.4 million SF of retail space and 1.5 million SF of industrial space. And that’s just the first development.

Downtown City Creek- Downtown Salt Lake is being completely transformed with the demolition and complete rebuild of 20 acres right in the heart of the city. City Creek will have 2 Million square feet of office space, 928,000 square feet of retail space, 5600 underground parking stalls, over 400 high-rise condos (not including additional future residential developments), a sky-walk over State Street and more than 6 full acres of open-air pedestrian walkways and paths, including a glass-roof arcade, gardens and fountains. Water will flow throughout the green space, descending more than 47 feet from one end to the other.

Trolley Square Remodel- Another 20,000 square feet of retail space is being added to historic Trolley Square during it’s renovation. Also planned are outdoor features, such as water fountains, dining areas, and fireplaces.

Real Salt Lake Soccer Stadium-Uath’s professional soccer team, Real Salt Lake, is buildinga 42-acre $180 Million stadium and hotel in Sandy. But that’s only part of the plan- the entire project will be $650 Million, 136-acre multi-use project.

IKEA Draper-IKEA has broken ground on its new 310,000 SF Draper location and is hiring 350 workers for it’s spring 2007 opening. The store will sit on 22.5 acres and will also feature a 300-seat restaurant.

KraftMade Facility-Kraftmade Cabinetry is building a new $106 Million 700,000 SF manufacturing plant in West Jordan at 9800 S. 6200 West that will bring an additional 1300 new jobs to the area.

Add these projects to the 2600-acre Traverse Mountain community and new 150,000 SF Cabelasin Lehi and the new LDS temples being built in Draper and South Jordan and you have a valley bursting with development and growth.

See How Many Homes Before You Buy?

           

How many homes should you see before you make an offer on one?

This is an interesting question because there are a lot of opinions. And much of the answer depends on a few factors;

What are your main objectives in buying? Is this a home you’ll most likely be in for a long time or most likely somewhere you’ll be in for a few years? How important is the investment part? Is this your dream home? Are the schools the most important thing to you or the neighborhood or the size or does any of that matter? Is this a home for your family or just an investment?

Who is helping you? Are you going to find the home on your own before having an agent help you? Are you going to have a new agent help you that doesn’t know as much about the market? Are you going to have an experienced Realtor who knows the market well help you right from the start? 

If you are buying as a couple, do you agree on what you want? Do you have completely differing opinions or do both of you have the same vision of what to buy? Couples often do not agree on what they want, which can make the process much more difficult and frustrating. Deciding up front and making a list of what you’re looking for can help.

Have you finalized your financing? Have you decided on the lender you will be using and have your pre-approval and know exactly what payment and sales price you are comfortable with? After financing is in place and buyers feel good about their payments- they can move ahead more quickly and confidently.

Are you realistic? Do you believe in the perfect home? Are you wanting fate to grab you and shake you when you step into the right home, as though God himself were telling you that “this is the one”? Some people just want to feel like they’re getting the best “deal”, while others want to find a good home at a fair price. If you’re looking to buy a house for 15% under its market value, you’ll be looking for a long time and may never find a home to buy.

Depending on these (and other) factors, you may want to see many homes or just a few. If you do it the way I think is best, you’ll most likely find the right home pretty quickly. And, contrary to some people’s beliefs, it is okay to buy one of the first homes you see.

          

A Good Way To Find a Home

Usually when someone is ready to buy it does not take long to find the right home. Once they have met with the lender and set the payment and price they are comfortable with we are ready to go. Often they will tell us what they are looking for and we will find and preview the first set of homes to show them. If they don’t find one they like in the first set of homes we can at least get a good sense of what they liked and didn’t like about those homes. Then we show them more homes, adjusting for what we now know they like and usually find them a home they love within the first two or three trips of seeing 4-8 homes. Of course, some buyers take much longer, and some buy one of the first few homes they see. 

There is a young couple I met over 18 months ago and showed them a few homes and I just saw them at a house two weeks ago and they are still looking. They will probably be paying $40,000-$70,000 more than they would have paid 18 months ago, but they are determined to find the perfect house.

My wife and I bought the third home we looked at and it’s been the best home I’ve ever owned. We decided on what we were looking for and when we found it we bought it. We called the listing agent and said we’d wait for the agent to get there and the owners to come home. We sat right there at the kitchen table and wrote the offer with the sellers and their agent. Full price, and we worked out dates that worked for everyone.  Win/win- that’s the right way to buy a home.

Testing Your Home for Meth

                      

Last year Utah state Senator Bob Bennett introduced a $3.5 Million spending bill that included $600,000 to fight meth in Utah. The bill was approved by the Senate and signed into law last year.

Now, Health Department officials in Cache, Box Elder, and Rich Counties have created a meth-testing program where residences can have a home tested for the toxic drug and it’s meth-related chemicals for $150.

Methamphetamine is a highly addictive drug and is made from common household chemicals. The drug stimulates the central nervous system and when it is produced, can leave a residue throughout the building it is made or used. This residue can be harmful and even deadly and can be found in walls, floors, plumbing, furniture, and even counter-tops and fixtures.

There aren’t any other areas around the state where local health departments will provide this service (although private companies are available), but Logan Police Sgt. Bret Randall says he thinks the service will be popular and other counties around the state will copy the program. “Your main customer will be the Realtors”, Randall says.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration says that it considers meth the number one drug threat in Utah with 49 kilograms seized statewide in 2005 and with it’s lingering harmful effects.

When selling a home that has had meth in it, you need to have the home certified clean by the state before occupants are allowed to inhabit the home.

Once the home has been certified by the state, you no longer need to disclose that the home had meth present in it. The state just passed that into law two years ago and now when a home that has been certified clean it should not be stigmatized with the “meth house” label.

To test your home for meth in the Salt Lake area click HERE.

Utah Unemployment Rate at Record Low 2.5%

  

The job market in Utah was already one of the lowest in the nation at 4.2% in September, and now, incredibly, it’s even lower at 2.5%. Mark Knold, senior economist for Utah Workforce Services, says “Ultimate ‘full employment’ would be everyone working, but that never really happens. This is as close as you get.”

The Utah job market grew by 5%, three times the national average, in October and with thousands of jobs being created over the next couple years, many employers are fearful about finding workers to fill the need.”This is a huge issue for us,” says Fred Lampropoulos, founder and CEO of Merit Medical Systems Inc. “In fact, the single most pressing issue in our business is to retain and attract talent. We’re looking for another 50 to 100 [people] and I tell you, it’s tough.”

The construction industry has added 14,800 jobs during the last 12 months and that growth is expected to remain steady as works ramps up on the new $1Billion redevelopment of downtown Salt Lake City. “Right now, we’re in pretty good shape,” acknowledges Randy Price, human resources director for Big-D Construction, “but as work and jobs come and go, we are going to need more talent.”

Jeff Thredgold, a consultant to Zions Bank, says that the state’s labor pool probably won’t be filling any time soon. “The biggest challenge in the region is where to find people to hire.” Jobs are being created faster than people are moving into the state to fill them.

In October there were only 33,000 adult Utahns officially unemployed. Nationally the unemployment rate is at 4.4 percent.

Outdoor Smoking Ban Passes in Salt Lake City

 

The Salt Lake City Council voted unanimously last night to pass an ordinance banning smoking in outdoor public places. This means that it will be against ordinance to smoke in Library Square, on trails, public parks and baseball diamonds, golf courses, soccer fields, city cemetery, and within 25 feet of bus stops and 50 feet of public gatherings of 100 or more people on city property.

Councilwoman Jill Remington Love says, “What we’re really after is a cultural change. We’re really trying to create safe, healthy places with our parks.” 

The initial proposed fine for breaking the ordinance was around $300, but was lowered and passed at $25. Enforcement will be nominal.

Before the ordinance can take effect, it must be signed by the mayor and published in major newspapers, which should take another week or two.

According to the Surgeon General nine other cities in Utah already prohibit smoking in parks;  Clinton, Hyde Park, Logan, Midvale, Riverton, Sandy, South Jordan, Spanish Fork, and West Jordan.

There are close to 600 cities across the country that have outdoor smoking ordinances.

Draper City Approves Light Rail

 

The Draper City Council last night unanimously approved a new light-rail (TRAX) route to run 8 miles through the city and down in Utah County. The new TRAX line will cost $245- $300 million to build and approximately $6 million to run every year.

The debate has gotten heated in the weeks leading up to the vote, with many residences unhappy about the idea of a train running along 3.5 miles of the Porter Rockwell trail.

Utah Transit Authority (UTA) bought the right of way (with the consent of Draper residences) on an existing Union Pacific rail line back in 1993 for the purpose of running TRAX on it.

Trains will run at an average speed of 37 mph every 15 minutes or so and carry an estimated 3540 new riders every weekday. It is estimated that the new rail line will also reduce the number of vehicles on the road by 1150 each weekday.

TRAX says the new route is not high on it’s priorities, with new extensions already planned to the west and north, and estimates the Draper line won’t be running for at least 5-7 years.

Cracking the Zillow Code

       

Lee Ovington of Valuation411 takes a crack at dissecting the Zillow valuation process. Also read the comment by David Gibbons of Zillow, where he sheds some additional light on the algorithms used.

Ovington writes, “Quite simply, the Zestimate relies on a calculated relationship of assessed value to sale price. Zillow merely takes selected transactions and calculates the relationship between the Assessed Values and the Sales Prices. It then applies that ratio to the subject’s assessed value (plus or minus some adjustments) and “whala”, you have Zestimate!”

Gibbons explains, “… the reason you measure a strong correlation between tax assessed values and Zestimates is not because our algorithm is simplistic but because the data we have is incomplete in your area… we’re missing the other information we typically get from the assessor, like sq. ft. and # of beds and baths. In cases like this, no other data is considered in the Zestimate – not becasue the algorithm is flawed – but because we don’t yet have the info.”

He continues, “When we do have more information, we use it. The last time I saw a correlation coefficient for all of our data fields, the most correlated field was actually “finished sq. ft.”. Our algorithm mashes up multiple valuation approaches. This allows us to both produce fairly accurate Zestimates with little data but also to significantly tighten up Zestimates when there is more data to be considered.”

One of the interesting parts of the post is where he talks about defending his appraisal to a homeowner who wants to believe the value they found on Zillow and why the appraisal would/could come in lower.

This is something that is starting to happen, and will happen more and more as the public becomes more aware of Zillow and as Zillow improves their valuation processes.

Utah Becomes Resort Haven

      

Mountain News released it’s Industry Report today showing that Utah is the place to build luxury mountain resorts. Affirming what local s have known all along, Utah has some incredible space for resorts and a quality of life not commonly found elsewhere.

From the report;

“With its dramatic rock outcroppings, destination ski areas, and still affordable land values, Utah is fast becoming the go-to state for luxury accommodations and resort developments hoping to become the next Aspen or Sun Valley.”

And with it’s easy access (30 minutes or less) to world-class ski and mountain resorts, Salt Lake City is becoming more of a resort destination itself.

One of the best parts of living in Salt Lake City is the abundance of recreational activities all year round.

In the summer there is incredible hiking and biking trails, dozens of lakes, and Moab has been rated as the top mountain biking and 4-wheeling destination in the world several times. There are rivers to run, Draper has world-class hand-gliding, and there are thousands of miles of trails and adventure.

During Autumn you’ll see some of the most breath-taking canyon views with amazing colors from millions of leaves changing shade. You’ll find great camping, hunting and ATV trails all along the Wasatch Mountain range.

In the winter there is world class skiing within thirty minutes of downtown Salt Lake City, Ogden or Park City. There is ice skating, snow mobiling and even snow sledding runs with ropes that pull you up the mountain.

Four full seasons grace the area with rich, natural beauty and outdoor opportunities. If you enjoy nature and beauty, Utah offers you more of it than most anywhere else in the world. For more information on living in Utah call 801-545-7272.

How to Get on TechCrunch

       

Many companies that have been featured on TechCrunch say that within days their new company has hundreds of thousands of visitors. Some say that TechCrunch can launch a company better than $Millions worth of advertising. And it’s free.

Tricky part is getting on.

For those who don’t know, Techcrunch is a blog that talks about new start-ups and is one of the most-viewed blogs on the internet. Michael Arrington is the founder and editor.

I met Michael at Inman Connect. I think the reason his blog has become so powerful is he seems like a really down-to-earth guy who actually cares about what he’s doing. He is truthful about his opinions and he breaks big stories first. And even though he doesn’t feature most of the dozens of stories and companies that are submitted daily (TechCrunch only runs three or four features/day) he never comes off as smug or pretentious.

Guy Kawasaki has an interview with Michael Arrington discussing the TechCrunch blog and phenomenon.

If you are launching a start-up then you will definately want to see this video, where they discuss how to be written up on the one place that gets you more exposure to VC’s than anywhere else.

BlueRoof, our First 100 Days – Part 2

                  

Usually when a business is formed, the people who create it spend some time putting together a business plan, raise some money and find people to work with. Then they put it all together. It usually takes a while from when they first begin thinking about starting a company to when they open for business.

With BlueRoof, our timeline looks much different. I decided to start a company around a website that was not even created yet. I thought about it for a week and gave my notice to Coldwell Banker (who always treated me very well and handled everything with grace) and was asked to stay on for a month while they found my replacement and not tell anyone that I would be leaving until we announced it. So although I had a month before I left, I was still managing an office of 110 agents and creating my website. Mike didn’t come on board until after I had launched the site and we actually became a brokerage.

We didn’t have angel funding or approach any VC’s because we didn’t want anybody telling us how to run our company. I have paid for everything, without any loans, which has been scary sometimes. Fortunately we have been profitable from the beginning.

At the beginning our model was more about price than anything. We knew we could offer people a better price than they were getting at other brokerages and with our technology we could operate for less. We have also been working on the concept of allowing people to find a home on their own and receive half the buyer agent commission. We’ve had that from the beginning, and so far we’ve been getting a couple a month. That is not our focus, like other companies around the country, but rather a small piece of what we do. If someone already knows of the house they want to buy, or they just want to find it on their own, without the help of a BlueRoof agent, we figure that’s a lot of work we didn’t have to put into it- so we’ll give that buyer half the money and still represent them throughout the transaction.

Until a week ago, we didn’t have a clear direction. We spent our first 90 days wandering through different ideas and tweaking our model a hundred times. Things that normally would happen before a company launched, we have been doing as we went along. Which, ultimately, I think has some advantages because we’ve been allowed to see the result as we make changes and improve our service and value model. We’ve been able to listen to our clients and we’ve heard from people who use our website and read this blog.

The last three months have shown me more stress than I have ever felt in my life. There have been nights I could not sleep or even sit down because I had so much anxiety. And there have been some amazing rewards. We’ve had clients write us letters and cards and emails that express such gratitude. We had one client name a room in their house the “BlueRoof Room” and we’ve made some good friends. And I’ve been brought back to center with my family and home and friends and the values and ideals that important to me.

During this time I’ve seen people act in ways that have surprised me. Some people I thought were friends have shown an ugliness I didn’t know they had, simply because our company was different then theirs. Other people whom I thought would be among our biggest critics have shown us a lot of support. You learn a lot about people by the way they say goodbye.

   

To date, the MLS shows we have listed 63 properties, have 30 current listings, and have closed 26 buyer-side sales (four made online). Add the 17 sales we have under contract and we have written 106 contracts, or about one a day. We have 13 people in the company and 11 who sell, which means we average about 10 deals/person during our first 100 or so days. Not bad for a start-up with no direction.

I’m grateful to have such a fun group of people to work with everyday. Our team is strong and talented. We move into our new office space next week and in a few weeks we’ll be starting a new marketing campaign around our company vision and we’ll begin bringing some fine people into our organization. We’re all pretty excited right now.

Thank you to all of the industry people and friends who have been so supportive. Here’s looking forward to us all having a ton of success during the next 100 days!

BlueRoof, Our First 100 Days – Part 1

    

When we first opened as a brokerage at the end of July we knew this would be a ride, but it’s been even crazier than expected. We’ve had a lot of fun and a lot of stress, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

BlueRoof began by accident, really. I had decided to do a re-design of a website that I’ve had for a few years, but after meeting with my web-developer and seeing some mock-ups I decided I would build a new website altogether. So I did a ton of research on names and logos and everything else and put together the plan for what I believed would be the very best real estate website possible. I figured if I was going to spend my time and resources, I’d go all the way with it. Whether it actually became the best real estate site or not it would, at least, be my favorite.

As the website starting to come together and I thought more about it I considered starting my own company. I had always wanted to. And I was always complaining that I could do things better. So why not see what I could do? The timing was right with the consumer begging for change and the local real estate market booming. I discussed it with my wife and a close friend and decided to do it. I approached Mike Shehan, who was the Director of Marketing for Prudential Utah (and by far the best marketing person in the business) and asked him to be a partner. Mike had owned his own company before and has a good business mind. Mike also has a lot of strengths where I don’t, so I thought it would be a great fit. Luckily for me, he agreed to come on board.

    

Building a good company from the ground up is tough, but with the demands of launching a major website, BlueRoof.com, and the fact that our business model is challenging the traditional real estate establishment- well, it’s been interesting.

Before we launched, I had already began to get to know some pretty innovative people in the industry. I had been in contact, through blogging with Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s CFO before they launched and I was one of the people searching for clues about what they were doing, which led me to a bunch of other innovative websites and companies. At the end of May I attended the TechCrunch party in Seattle, co-hosted by Redfin and met Eric Heller and Glenn Kelman and some other Redfin and Microsoft guys that let me pick their brains.

Right after we became a brokerage we attended the Inman Connect convention in San Francisco July 26-28. We went to the convention to accomplish three things;

-Get the BlueRoof name out in the industry

-Discover and Learn

-Have a Blast/Meet Fun People

And we had huge successes with all three. The first hour of the first day we attended Michael Harrington’s opening address about the state of the industry, where he described how the industry needs to change because it is broken and where he thinks the industry needs to go. We were listening and realized that he was describing our business model. One of the things he talked about was how the MLS’s are too controlling with the information and there should be a place where people can see all listed homes AND For Sale By Owner (FSBO) homes at the same time. BlueRoof.com had this. So I stood up and announced that we had every listing from every brokerage and FSBO homes on our website and you could search for them and see the results together. He asked how we did that when the MLS would not allow it and I replied that we just did it. A few minutes of back and forth and a woman toward the front of the audience stands up and says she is with the local MLS and we weren’t allowed to do that. It was a beautiful moment. Everyone held their breath or laughed, laptops were opening our homepage throughout the room and now we were given a villain to make us look even better.

So after that first meeting people were talking about what happened and about BlueRoof all week. People were coming up to us and telling us how great it was that we were doing what we were doing. They would ask us about our company and we would over-hear people discussing it- it was great.

We went to the convention booths and found some great technologies. Some we have implemented into our business and some we will implement, and then some didn’t work for us, but it’s good to see the “new stuff” anyway.

Mike’s girlfriend flew into town and with my wife we met a bunch of people and had a lot of fun going out (very late) every night and playing around in the city. We drove out to wine country and ate at some great local restaurants and enjoyed our time quite a lot.

It was a great trip for us. When we got back home our work was about to begin…

The Future of Real Estate and Limousines

              

Andy Denton writes a great post about differences in transportation options and how they are similar to the choices consumers have with real estate brokerages. It’s good reading and it has a good message.

When it comes to personal services, there are so many choices and people telling you to look this way or that. The part that I really enjoyed about Andy’s story is the illustration that price does not always equal quality. Sometimes you pay more for sub-par quality, and sometimes higher quality actually costs you less, such as the case with a limousine costing less than a taxi for a ride home from the airport. Why pay more for a taxi when you can have a limo for less, and it’s better quality?

There are different business models and different agents, and each have their own merits. At the end of the day just look at how much it will cost and what you get for that price. The cheapest isn’t going to be the best for everybody, and most people don’t want to over-pay, although it’s obvious that some people don’t mind at all. And there is no right or wrong, there is only what is right or wrong for you, and that’s what matters anyway.

HouseValues Loses Big in Third Quarter

               

Crappy Real estate lead-generation website, HouseValues.com says in its recent press release that it lost over $1.5 Million in the third quarter of 2006. Probably because its one of the lamest business models and websites in the known universe of market conditions, costs associated with additional support staff, and the increased cost of marketing.

Look, here’s the thing about HouseValues. It is a lead generation tool that deceives the public into thinking they are getting free information about the value of their home, but really just collects their information and sells it to the highest-bidding real estate agents. And it’s not like they give the consumer’s information to a highly-trained and qualified Realtor that has passed a thorough screening process. No, they just sell it to whoever will pay.

Do they qualify these real estate agents to make sure that they are good, hard-working, decent people? No.

Do they check for the qualifications of the agents? No.

Do they care at all about the agent, other than their ability and willingness to pay for the leads? No.

I’m not saying that it is their responsibility to. They developed a company based on a need and they have grown very fast because they filled that need. What I am saying is that the company sucks and nobody should pay them for leads, but instead spend their money marketing themselves and generating their own leads. And do it with some integrity.

What made HouseValues successful was their recognition of the fact that most real estate agents/brokers were way behind the times with using the internet to attract consumers, turn those consumers into leads and those leads into sales.

What will cause the company to ultimately fail is the fact that as brokers slowly embrace the potential in the Internet and continue to create tools that are better, and as the public becomes more aware of these sorts of practices, the amount of leads generated by these types of whore-companies disintegrate. And the industry as a whole and the entire general public is better off for it. Who better to design information portals for real estate consumers than real estate companies and their clients?

Update (11-10-06)- See Andy Denton’s post about this same topic.

When a real estate site has lead generation as it’s focus, the consumer will not be served well. But if the focus of the website is to give the best tools and information available, then the consumer is taken care of first, and there will be plenty of ways to make money once the consumer is taken care of. Goole did it, MySpace did it, YouTube did it- and that’s why they became embraced so quickly and have become so successful. Obviously not all websites will be as big, but wouldn’t it be great if more sites took that approach?

The Power of Reputation

                               

The real estate industry is interesting.

One way it is interesting is that each agent, with each company is actually competing with each other for the same business. If a home-buyer is looking to buy a home and meets three real estate agents from the same office of the same company, they are handled the same way as though they met three agents from three separate companies. Each agent wants that business and is competing for that business.

Realtors and real estate agents are independant contractors, so each have their own business and do things a bit differently than the others.

And although we are competing with each other, we have to cooperate with each other, and even pay each other, to facilitate transactions. So I might meet a young couple at an open house and walk them through the home and feel pretty good about them and think they feel pretty good about me. I might ask them if they would like to meet me tomorrow morning at my office to go over their needs so I can help them find a home and have them agree to meet me. I might then get a call later that evening from an agent in my office saying they have an offer for me on a home I have listed down the street from the one I held open and when I get the contract see that the buyers are the young couple I had met earlier at my open house.  Now, not only do I not get the sale, but I now will be paying another agent to represent the buyers that I thought I would be representing. That’s interesting…

So while we, as Realtors, are in the business of competition and cooperation, or co-opetition, the way we do business can have a major impact on our client’s success.

            

“All things being equal, agents will choose to show or not show homes based on who has it listed.”

There are some agents in my market that I know are unscrupulous. There are agents that I know are liars and will say and do almost anything to get business and I know that working with them means a transaction full of deception and non-disclosed items and problems. There are agents that I know do not care about their clients at all, but instead care only about their own gain.

And there are many agents that I know who are very good people and care very much about their clients and also care about each transaction being a win for everyone. Some agents work very hard and make sure that everything goes smoothly. Dates are met and everything is disclosed and they are always a pleasure to work with.

There are agents who I know usually under-price their listings, so I know that it may be worth showing if for no other reason than because my buyers will probably get a good deal (even if that means their sellers lose money). There are some agents that I know their assistants more than them because that’s who I deal with when I sell one of their homes.

And I also have judgements about some companies because of the experiences I have had with their agents, or because I know they hire so many new people and often have complications in the deals, or because I know the broker is a jerk and can not be reached and if there is a problem it’s going to be fight because of the broker. That deosn’t mean I don’t ever show that companies listings, but it does effect which homes I may show first.

And I also know of some agents that put homes on the MLS and that’s all they do. So I know if my clients buy that house I’m going to end up doing the work on both sides. And that puts me in a horrible situation because I only represent my buyers, but if disclosures aren’t filled out properly and the other agent is not helping the sellers, what do I do? Do I allow my clients to buy a home without the necessary disclosures? No way! So I need to make sure the sellers fill the disclosures out properly, but I can’t advise them or imply agency. This is sticky and can potentially open me up to liability.

So, if I have a buyer who is looking for a four bedroom rambler in South Jordan with a three car garage and vaulted ceilings, along with some other details, and I do a search on the MLS and find that there are 47 homes that meet that criteria, which ones do I show first?Obviously I cannot show them 47 homes in one day. I can usually show about 10-12 homes in a day, depending on how much time my clients want to spend in each home, and how far apart the homes are and what time of day we are looking (rush hour traffic) and whether we are driving together or if they are following me because they have a car full of kids (which takes even longer).  So, I’ll go through the list and pull out the top ten homes to show them. And I will base these top ten on if they have virtual tours where I can see that they are homes my buyers will like, whether the homes have some upgrades or features that may be appealing to my buyers, and sometimes I will choose because I know the agent and like the agent and I know the transaction will be a good experience if my clients buy that home.

Obviously if my clients don’t like any of the first ten, I’ll show them the next best ten, and then the next, and so on. Sometimes I need to show them every house on the market, including the homes listed by agents I don’t like. And sometimes the buyers still won’t find what they are looking for and so we just have to keep looking at every new home as they come on the market. But many times my clients find the right home in those first ten.

So the sellers of those homes benefited from listing with an agent who has a good reputation.

All things being equal, agents will choose to show or not show homes based on who has it listed. If it is an agent they know and like they will want to show that home. If the agent is someone they know is dishonest, or it is a “limited services” listing, where the buyers agent has to do a lot of the work for the sellers, many times agents will not want to show those listings first, or at all.

I don’t like showing homes that are “limited services”. I don’t like it at all. I would prefer to never have to show one of these listings again and I would prefer that none of the agens in my company ever have to show one of these listings again. I know that we eventually will, but it would be great if these listings were not around. And I know that sellers who list their homes with agents who offer “limited services” listings are losing out on many showings. I know that many agents won’t want to show those homes, or at least they won’t show them first, which sometimes is the same thing.

If I have a home listed and we receive multiple offers and I know one or more of the agents I’ll always tell my clients what I know about them or what my experience working with them has been, so my clients can use that information as part of their decision on which offers to respond to or accept.

Reputation within the real estate community is very important because reputation tells our story. It is important to work well with other agents and to care about getting things done efficiently. And it is important to make friends with agents at other companies and to care about them and their success also.

There is plenty of business to go around, and there are a lot of different business models and brokers and cultures and there is no one right or wrong place to work. But our reputation is important no matter which company we work with, and for the sake of our home buyers and sellers some of us make that a part of our business plan.

BlueRoof.com/ Utah Jazz Video Slam Dunk Contest Begins

BlueRoof has teamed up with the Utah Jazz to create the biggest slam dunk contest in the state. For all ages, the contest is simple, just film yourself or someone else slam-dunking (wearing a FREE BlueRoof.com T-shirt or logo), upload it onto YouTube, and copy/paste the YouTube URL on to the promo page of BlueRoof.com.

Then come back to BlueRoof.com between December 1-8 to vote for your favorite slam dunks. The top three vote-getters will be shown on the JumboTron in the Delta Center and on the televised half-time show and the crowd will determine which dunk wins.

See examples HERE.

The winning dunk will receive four tickets to an upcoming Utah Jazz basketball game, a autographed team basketball and an autographed game jersey.

You can pick up a free BlueRoof.com T-shirt at the Delta Center ticket office or at the BlueRoof offices at 6955 Union Park Center, Cottonwood Heights, Ut 84121. Or you can print out the logo and pin in on to your shirt, or even just write it on a shirt with marker.

Show us what you’ve got and we’ll show it to a crowd of 20,000 people and give you, a child, or friend a chance at celebrity.