All Forum Posts by: Jeremiah Maughan

First off, I'm glad you're doing your research. I've had to pick up the pieces of far too many situations where people have bought properties that weren't zoned right, overpaid based on inaccurate expectations, and then got hammered by the city. The city council adopted a list of priorities in 2018 and the top of the list was zoning enforcement.

So far you're on the right track. The city does enforce heavily, but they do so on a complaint basis. If you ever hear of someone say "I did XYZ and I am doing just fine", they usually leave off the rest of the statement which is "because I haven't been caught yet". I've seen the city require the entire removal of the kitchen. I've seen owners charged with misdemeanors. Some owners consider it acceptable business risk, but that's a pretty expensive investment to play chicken with the city.

There are enough rules in the city that I highly recommend you go through the permitting process. It adds more value in the long run when you go to sell it when you can say "legal accessory apartment."

From an email exchange I had with the city's most senior official on the matter when I was working on a similar challenge:

"We don’t use the term "mother-in-law apartment" because it is just a one-family home with more than one kitchen. As such, our ordinances permit only related members (family) to reside in the whole house. This can be done anywhere in Provo without respect to the zone. Owner occupancy is not required; a renter can have their family members residing with them and using the 2nd kitchen. Zoning does not care if money or services are changing hands (rent) nor do we care if there is a separate entrance. This home would have only 1 address.

"An accessory apartment is an accessory unit in a one-family home that is recognized and permitted by the City to be rented out to unrelated persons. The home must be owner-occupied in order to use the accessory apartment and the home must be located in the appropriate zone. This situation would have 2 addresses."

If you want an accessory apartment, I'm 90% sure it has to be in an A-overlay zone. Definitely don't hold your breath getting duplex status, it's extremely rare to get a SFR converted to a legal duplex.

Regarding parking, that's become a more hot button issue. It simply says "off street parking" but they allow a garage and the driveway in front of the garage to both count. In the rentals I manage with long driveways, parking tandem (one behind the other) has been approved and counted in the total.

Hope that helps! Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss more.

The first Wednesday of every month is our Utah County get together!  In "honor" of the time of year, March's event will be centered around the tax implications of rental properties.  We're looking forward to hearing from industry professionals about what you should know.

As we've made friends here in BiggerPockets we've learned that a lot of you are first time buyers.  My company hosts homebuyer seminars on a regular basis so we thought we'd post an invitation here for any local BP members who would like to come and add to their knowledge base.  Hope to see you here!

PS - The pitching of services is minimal, just an invitation at the end to meet with us to discuss your specific situation.

Yup, it's up and running:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521/topics/655655-utah-county-meetup-for-february

Yes, we'll be sending those emails out as soon as we have them typed up.  One of my guys is going to call around to make sure we got all the spelling right.

Redfin is pretty new to Utah, so I'm actually not very familiar with their tools. They pitch themselves as a technology company that uses real estate agents, so for the valuation was it an agent in Redfin who did the estimate or was it their software that did? Utah is a non-disclosure state, which means actual sold prices aren't available outside the MLS. As such, most automated CMAs (like Zillow's Zestimate) are off by quite a bit. I do recommend having a local agent run an actual CMA, but even those can be sketchy since there are adjustment factors.

When trying to keep things fair between parties, the safest thing is to get an appraisal. Ironically those vary too, but fortunately it's a neutral 3rd party so there's no liability issues. However, an appraiser will struggle to value the home from a flip perspective. They don't give after repair value, they just estimate current value, which is still going to be above what you should pay for it. That being said, you could probably get an appraiser who is willing to ballpark ARV based on the comps he was using.

Most of the time agents do CMAs (which are normally free) because they are representing the buyer or they hope to represent the buyer/seller in the near future.  Do you plan to handle the whole transaction privately?

Thanks for listening to my ramblings.  Hopefully that is useful.

What a great turnout and discussion last time!  Looking forward to seeing new and returning faces in February.  We've got a solid list of topics to share as a group such as investor war stories, successes and failures, tenant management, analysis tools, goal setting, etc and hearing from professionals in the industry. No pressure, just come to share and learn and feel free to contribute topic ideas!

@Ryan Mertens Yup! Anyone can come!

Hope you all took some time off! ...Yeah right, you probably were browsing houses for sale... Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow evening, January 2nd.  Come prepared with your ideas, goals, and questions for 2019.  Lots of volatility in the market should make for an interesting year.

Here's the one for January:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521/topics/646933-utah-county-meet-up-for-january

Come set your real estate goals for 2019!   We've got a great group going and each month we're coming up with topics to share as a group such as investor war stories, successes and failures, tenant management, analysis tools, goal setting, etc and hearing from professionals in the industry. No pressure, just come to share and learn and feel free to request a topic!