Free Utah Real Estate.com

With a 2.5% population increase during the 2007-8 fiscal year, Utah is the fastest-growing state in the country. This fact spent a few days in the national headlines, but what most people still don’t know is that this makes two years in a row.

After some cities challenged census results, Utah’s 2006-7 growth charted at 3.2%, topping Nevada’s 2.8 by a large margin.

What all this means for Utah real estate is that development will continue and the demand for housing will remain strong.

Long term projections mentioned in a Salt Lake Tribune article highlight the need for careful planning now as Davis County is projected to run out of farmland by 2020 and state traffic will double by 2040.

Decades ago, many Utahns felt a minor self-esteem crisis for being less metropolitan than coastal states. More recently, Utah’s esteem seems to be booming as the world recognizes our outstanding communities, workers, and natural surroundings.

In short, Utah real estate, while feeling the pinch of the national ecomony (though less so than other areas), remains a viable industry and investment, and will continue so beyond the foreseeable future.

Perhaps you’re wondering, with all the totally free services offered at FURE, how we expect to be a viable business? Well, I’ll tell you.

In researching other “free” utah real estate sites, I’ve found that about 10% of the listings pay to upgrade. Of course, those sites have considerably different services than FURE.

For example, few (if any) of them let home buyers save searches that automatically notify them when new matches appear on the site.

Few (if any) automatically alert buyers of price changes on their favorite properties (few even let buyers save favorite properties).

Few (if any) provide full contact information and a secure contact page (which keeps the seller’s email address private) on their “free” listings, which means such listings are pretty useless unless the seller pays to upgrade.

I could go on with more FURE features & benefits, but you get the idea. Free Utah Real Estate.com is simply a superior site by having more useful tools and being more user-service-oriented. We provide exactly what you want and need.

Based on that fact, we hope to get so much traffic that many users will want to upgrade their listings (for less than $10/month - much less than competing sites) in order to make their listing appear above the free listings in searches and to add another 7 photographs with captions to their listing.

And that, my friends, is how FURE plans to be economically viable - by giving nearly everything away for free.

I hope you’ll enjoy your free gift and help spread the word!

Sometimes it takes a couple tries to get something just right. That’s what we’ve finally accoplished with the name of our site: Free Utah Real Estate (FURE).

Here are the reasons that make this name the perfect fit:

1. Our mission becomes crystal clear. We’re all about helping everyone - agents, FSBO’s - advertise their properties and services for free.
2. The name helps people find us more easily by matching some of the most common search terms.
3. By improving our own ranking for popular search terms, links from FURE become more valuable, which helps Realtors by boosting their own web pages when they create free profiles with links to their web pages.

Why didn’t we think of this name earlier? Perhaps because we were trying to get a shorter name…but face it, the old name wasn’t that short anyway. Perhaps because someone else had it registered until earlier this year.

At any rate, here we are, and I like it. Good things are coming for all involved.

One of the creators of Free Utah Real Estate.com (me) has decided to sell his house. Guess where I’m listing it first? Of course - right here.

And why not? I’ve always said Free Home Utah.com is the ideal real estate site - full home information on free listings (though I’ll upgrade my own without paying myself the optional $9.99 upgrade fee), easy to navigate, and home buyers don’t need to register to get all the information they need to contact the seller.

This doesn’t mean I won’t use an agent as well. I have an agent who sold me this house, and who I sold a home or two back when I was an agent and he wasn’t. He’s thorough and pleasant to work with and can get the job done faster than one online posting alone. I’ll give him a call in a few days and get the paperwork done.

Besides, those poor real estate agents are starving these days! With the home market slowed down, the competition for business is tougher than ever.

I’ll use him to help me buy another home as well - something without all the extra space I barely use in my current home. Using an agent to purchase a home, of course, doesn’t cost me - the buyer - a dime.

I’ll keep you posted on how it all goes.

More great news!According to Forbes Salt Lake City is listed as one of the 10 cities where home prices are likely to rise. This is based on job increases and how overbuilt the cities have become after the boom years. (Article attached to this email)

Utah’s great economy is bringing more jobs and housing demand to the area.  Housing related jobs such as Residential Construction workers, Mortgage Broker/Officers, Realtor’s, Developers, & other related fields have seen declines.  These jobs that are down are only a part of Utah’s Job Market.  With demand slow but steady and the supply declining, the real estate market will slowly recover.

We will watch and see how these recent mortgage changes affect the demand.

It is a great time to buy!

Be careful and aware of the many types of fraud.  People in the Wasatch Front have and will be convicted of loan fraud, a Federal Offense.  Desperate to sell the oversupply of homes they get too creative.   You do not want to get caught in the middle of that mess. If you have any questions about a transaction we can help you check on the legality and liability potential.

Visit Kennen’s agent profile for more information.

More good news!
I am happy to report more decreases in listing inventory.  The number of available homes in Utah County are 4,927.  This is down from 5,088 last month and much better than the 5,316 available home’s in the middle of June this year.

455 units sold in August.  August is the best selling month of the year.  This is only a couple more homes than sold in July.  But it is the high for the year so far.  September should show some slowing following the typical pattern.  This is illustrated in the decrease of under contract homes now at 690 units down from 781 a month earlier.  Note: the number under contract is usually higher than the solds for the month because new homes under construction can be under contract for many months while the home is being built, and some contracts fail.

It is not hard to notice home price changes.  The average sales price, year to date, for 2008 is down 7.57% from 2007.  On high end homes you can expect 30 and even 50% declines.  Homes are now more affordable for today’s buyers.

Visit Kennen’s agent profile for more information.

In case you didn’t already know, FSBO (say fiz’ bo) stands for “for sale by owner” in real estate agent parlance.

FSBO’s opt to sell their home on their own in order to avoid paying a commission to an agent, which sounds like a good deal, provided you can successfully A. sell you home, B. get a good price, C. avoid any financial or legal problems, D. handle all the marketing, paperwork, etc.

But I’ll save the ups and downs of going it alone for a future blog post.

For today, I’ll just point out that the one thing FSBO’s need most is buyers, and the best way to get buyers is to advertise.

A sign on the lawn catches the eye of whoever happens to drive by.

An ad in the classifieds catches whoever reads them that day (or week, or however long you run the ad).

The problem with most advertising is money. Advertising costs money. Classifieds in the local paper can run $65 per week. Most homes spend several months on the market before selling these days, so what amounts to only a fraction of the home’s value can add up in a hurry.

To get to the point, Free Utah Real Estate.com is free advertising. Sure, you can upgrade for under ten bucks per month and make your ad appear above others on searches and display additional photos, but even that’s next to nothing.

An ad on an internet real estate page catches whoever finds that page and property, which is the ever-growing preference among home buyers (and shoppers of all stripes). In fact, 85% of home buyers shop online before buying (up from 70% in 2004 and 41% in 2001).

The problem with most online advertising is that home buyers often have to register to see the complete listing, including the seller’s contact information. Buyers are increasingly reluctant to register for anything due to security and SPAM concerns. I once registered to get some real estate information and my email inbox filled with related SPAM for many years afterward.

Again, Free Utah Real Estate not only allows shoppers to view the complete listing without registration, but promises to never disclose your personal information to a third party nor use your email address for anything other than Free Utah Real Estate services.

Finally, many real estate web pages are complex or hard to navigate, adding frustration while decreasing effectiveness. Free Utah Real Estate has a clean, easy to follow format that even your four year old could probably click through just fine!

Yes, yes, I know, your four year old is more web-saavy than you are yourself!

All I’m saying is that Free Utah Real Estate was built for you and it does what you need it to and keeps things simple and effective and if you’re selling your home, especially without the help of an agent, then you’ll definitely want to take a few minutes to create a free (or upgraded) listing so you can rest easier knowing that you’ve got your beautiful home out where 85% of home buyers can find it.

85% figure taken from http://www.thinkglink.com/Six_Mistakes_Home_Buyers_Make.htm
70% and 41% figures from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_19/b3882615.htm.

One of the nice things about Free Home Utah is that you can search all you want without needing to register.

Many other sites let you search for Utah real estate but don’t show addresses or contact info or lots of property details until you register. It’s their way of collecting your data so they can advertise to you - not a bad idea but a hassle and a concern for anyone who already gets too much email spam and advertising. Continue Reading »

Today FreeHomeShop.com became FreeHomeUtah.com, complete with a few site enhancements like this blog. I’ll get some quality information added to it soon!

A week ago, we were on page 20 for the top Google search we’re targeting, nowhere for our secondary targeted search phrase, and page 1 for a related search.

I honestly believe that FreeHomeUtah.com provides the best service in our market for Utah real estate advertising - free complete listings, super-cheap upgrade option, easy to use, plus other nice benefits I’ll blog about later.

In short, we’ve built the better mousetrap (or housetrap, rather), and it’s time to take it to market.

Update: Just in time for 2009, we’ve updated our name once more to an even more effective one: Free Utah Real Estate. I’ll explain the rationale in a separate post.