Hello everyone! This is Ann Zieve with Keller Williams Success Realty and the Northern Utah Home Team here to give you my weekly market update, and today we’re going to take a look at some new homes on the market. We’re also going to continue our talk about the real estate purchase contract and why the earnest money is so important but first let’s take a look at those market statistics.
All right! Well, here’s our graph of our rolling market statistics and if we look at where we are in the middle of October here and compare it to where we were a month ago in September, you can see that everything is pretty much falling off as a sign that the market is slowing, number of listings is down, number of solds is down, price is also falling a little bit, and the only thing that is increasing is the number of days on market, and this is to be expected this time of year, so it’s really not an alarm. If you still have a home to sell or to buy, it’s still a great time to be doing so with interest rates low and some great people willing to work with you.
So let’s take a look at that real estate contract and talk about the earnest money. So here’s the standard Utah Real Estate Purchase Contract, and at the very top there’s a section about what’s called “earnest money.” Earnest money is the money that a buyer puts down to show their serious intent to buy a property, and the choice is either to deliver it with the contract or to deliver it within four days to your realtor, and then they put it into a trust account to hold it until closing. We like to recommend that the earnest money be 1% of the purchase price because that shows the seller that you’re really serious, and the important thing about earnest money is that if anything goes wrong in this contract and in the deal, the earnest money is the main remedy that the seller and buyer have to fix any problems.
For example, if the buyer defaults in the section 16 it talks about if the buyer defaults, they can, the seller can keep the earnest money or they can return it and pursue damages or they can sue to enforce the ruptcy and if the seller defaults, the buyer has the same option. They can get their earnest money back plus the equal amount from the seller as damages or they can have it be held and they can sue for damages. So all this is spelled out in section 16 of the contract, and how does a buyer or seller default? Well, they don’t do what they are supposed to. So that’s why it’s really important to understand this real estate purchase contract and work with a realtor who knows it inside and out so that they can protect you because that’s our main job, and we are happy to go over this with you, so get a hold of us.
Well, let’s take a look at some new homes on the market. All right, this first home is in Harrisville. It’s listed at $165,000. It’s a five-bedroom, two-bath tri-level, and it’s been redone inside with new carpet, new paint, new appliance, some new light fixtures. It has gorgeous views of the mountains out the back, and it also has a patio and a deck so you can sit out there and enjoy those gorgeous views. I do believe this is a bank-owned property so those of you who like that, you want to check this one out, and let’s take a look at one more. This is a custom rambler in West Haven listed at $299,000. It’s three-bedrooms, three-baths, and it has a three-car garage, and look at that gorgeous open floor plan. You’re going to love this. It’s almost 3,900 square feet, and it’s ready for you to move right in.
Well, that wraps up this week’s edition of the market update report. Feel free to give us a call, a text, or an email if you have any questions about any of the homes that we’ve looked at or anything that we talked about today, and we’re here to help you in any way we can to buy a home, sell a house , or invest in real estate. Until next week, keep living smart!