Recently Provo City Council was considering "ethics reform."  Basically if you have any business interests in Provo, you will not be able to be a function as a city councilman as you will not be allowed to talk about or be in any council meetings.  Obviously this has not passed yet, but it seems as if Provo City wants to put out a sign saying "business people need not apply for city council"  If you care at all about free speech, now is the time to get involved in city council meetings and let your voice be heard.

I serve as chairman for the Government affairs committee for the Utah County Association of REALTORS.  In that capacity I have become aware of many ridiculous items being proposed on the city level.  We were unsuccessful in getting Lehi City to postpone an impact fee increase, they doubled it to over $16,000.  Woodland Hills is proposing  the most severe and restrictive fence ordianance in the county and Spanish Fork just passed a moritorium on builing multi unit housing in some areas of the city. 

Maybe the cities haven't noticed but we are in the midst of one of the biggest slow downs in real estate in history.  Fortunately Utah is doing better than many parts of the United States.  Our economy has even be said to be the best in the union.  However, the  housing sector is suffering and the restrictions by some municipalites does not help.  Obviously the most hurtful item to home sales is the credit crunch.  The tightening of lending parameters effectively stopped Utah's seller market and double digit appreciation rates overnight.  Currently most of Utah County has 12 month or so inventories but some cities like Salem, Saratoga Springs and Lehi are seeing two, three and four years supplies of homes.   That means at the present rate of home sales, it could take years to clear out the present inventory.  Cities should be passing ordinances to help people achieve home ownership not make it harder.

 

That's how I see it from here.

P.S.

Recently I attended a thank you dinner with several important state and county legislators.  I can tell you we have some great folks working hard to serve the community, such as John Valentine, Utah sentate president, Rep. Mike Morley, Sen. Margaret Dayton, Sen. Curt Bramble, Rep. Keith Grover, Rep. Lorie Fowlke, Rep. Ken Sumison,  Rep, Craig Frank, Rep. Chris Herrod and Rep. Becky Lockhart to name a few.  We were also treated to a wonderful speech from pollster Dan Jones.