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March 11, 2007
Licensed Agents Must Be Honest Criminals
The third part of this lesson is mostly just random notes which I found interesting. I apologize that this post was a bit jumbled.
Using land, or rather developing it is always a tricky task. While large amounts of money can be made, one must be careful to follow the city zoning regulations to the T.
In order to develop land, you must prepare it, approve it, and record it. It can be scary spending money to prepare just to be told no by the city, and the city is used to saying no, they do it all day long. As a result, if you want to get anything by the city, you’re going to have to work hard to get a response other than the automatic “We can’t do that”.
Development and lot sales are restricted by the Uniform land sales act here in Utah. There are certain federal guidelines for every state, but Utah is stricter in their enforcement. These guidelines are meant to prohibit developers and partitioners of land from starting projects which they cannot afford to finish, and leaving their buyers holding the bag. Our instructor told us about how he had a friend that would develop land for cabins, and then sell them in various states of completion. From time to time he didn’t deliver on his promises, and he actually served time because of strict development laws.
Our Instructor was actually an investor, and as such he kept complaining about high taxes, saying he likes low ones…and he went on to state that while he feels some of his taxes are silly (they’re much higher than nicer properties), he hasn’t complained out of fear that the city will leave his taxes as they are, and raise the taxes on the nicer ones.
In Utah, there is an appeals pyramid of 3 stages. First, one would deal with the city, second, the county, and third the state.
I believe I’ve already mentioned that there are certain green laws meant to keep property taxes low for farmers. Due to abuse, Utah has been cracking down on exemptions, and requiring that the land actually be farmed. Many land owners have still managed to overcome these requirements by allowing farmers to lease/rent their land for brief periods of time.
Among all this discussion of laws, our teacher took the time to remind the class that you must disclose any past crimes before taking your test. He told a story about a man who had committed a misdemeanor as an adolescent and ‘forgot’ to list it, as it had occurred 30 years earlier, and was summarily denied his license as a result. This is not to say that all real estate agents in Utah have clean criminal records as some have claimed*. It just means that agents must disclose their crimes before being considered for a license.
The lesson concluded with our instructor advising that when you list your property, where at all possible, you should remove all fixtures that you do not intend to sell. Removing an item after a sale, particularly something the buyer thought came with the property (like an attached shed) is a way to land yourself in serious trouble.
*Editor’s Note* A special thanks goes out to Nigel from http://slcrealestate.blogspot.com/ for setting me straight in regard to one of his article posts in which I mistakenly inferred that he had stated that agent’s are not criminals. Rather he seems to have been stating that harsher rules restricting brokers licensing and requiring background checks has led to a stronger real estate market. I don’t disagree with this, but I think there should be more restrictions in order to weed out the incompetent.
read comments (1)
March 12th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Please point to where I “claimed” all real estate agents in Utah have clean criminal records.
I know I have not said that. Please retract this false statement.