Before you start
- Buyers: get a preapproval from a lender, before looking at anything
- Sellers: find your documents, including any permits, HOA papers and the year built
- Both: know which county your numbers are coming from, every time
- Both: decide what you actually want, in writing, before the listings start moving you
When you engage an agent
- Buyers: you will sign a written buyer agreement before touring, required since 17 August 2024. Read it
- Confirm the compensation and where it is written down. It is not set by law and is fully negotiable
- Confirm who the principal broker is. Your agreement is with the brokerage
- Ask whether anybody is acting as a limited agent for both sides, and get the disclosure if so
While you are looking, or listed
- Drive the commute you will actually make, in the season you will actually make it
- Ask for the comparable sales themselves, not a summary, with the county and date on each
- Separate list prices from sale prices in your own head, every time
- Sellers: watch days on market. It accumulates in public and buyers read it
Once you are under contract: the three deadlines
A Utah Real Estate Purchase Contract runs on dates, and they pass whether or not anybody is ready. The Due Diligence Deadline, the Financing and Appraisal Deadline, and the Settlement Deadline. Write them somewhere you will see them.
- Book the inspection immediately, not at the end of due diligence
- If the inspection suggests a specialist, you need days left to get one out
- Sellers: the Seller Property Condition Disclosure is due by its deadline, complete and signed
- Pre-1978 houses: lead-based paint disclosure, the EPA pamphlet, and the buyer gets a 10 day window to test
- HOA property: the governing documents have to reach the buyer
Land and acreage, extra items
- Is there a water right, what is its number, and what is its nature of use
- Which subarea is it in. Cedar City Valley is split roughly by SR-56 and rights cannot move between subareas
- Has the conveyance been reported to the Division of Water Rights
- Access: where is it, is it legal, and who maintains the road
- What is the parcel zoned for, and does that match what you intend
Before you close
- Do the final walkthrough, and actually walk it
- Confirm what conveys with the house matches the contract
- Read the settlement statement before you are sitting at the table
- Know that it is yours when it records at the Iron County Recorder, not when you sign
Things worth refusing to rush
The disclosure, because it can follow a seller after closing. The inspection, because the window is finite. And reading anything before signing it, because every document in a transaction is negotiable right up until it is signed and none of it is afterward.
Nothing here is legal or tax advice. When the answer to one of these items has consequences for your situation, that is a question for the principal broker, an attorney, a CPA or a lender, depending on which one it is.
The short version
Know which county your numbers came from. Read what you sign. Watch the three deadlines. Ask about water before you buy land. Do not guess on a disclosure.
The mistakes that cost the most
Pricing a listing to test the market rather than to sell it. The market does not negotiate with an optimistic number, it just ignores it, and the days on market counter runs in public the whole time.
Waiving or burning through due diligence. The window is finite and it is the only leverage a buyer has after the offer is accepted. Booking the inspection on day one costs nothing and preserves every option.
Treating a disclosure as paperwork. It is the one part of a sale that can follow a seller after closing.
Buying land without asking about water first. In Iron County that question has a hard answer and it is better to hear it before you are attached to a parcel.
What to keep in writing
- Every deadline, somewhere you will actually look at it
- What the compensation is and who is paying it
- Anything the other side agreed to verbally. If it is not in an addendum it did not happen
- What conveys with the house, specifically, including appliances
If you are doing this from out of state
- Watch the drives before you book the trip, not after
- Plan the visit around a weekday, so you see the town working
- Come in winter if you can only come once
- Line up the lender conversation before you arrive, so a good house is actionable
- Decide in advance what would make you walk away, and write it down
People who do those five things tend to make one trip and buy. People who skip them tend to make three trips and still feel uncertain.
Longer versions: buying in Cedar City, selling in Cedar City, and water rights in Iron County.