Utah County Total Number of Homes Sold at a Five Year Low

Fewer homes were sold in Q1 2009 in Utah County than any quarter within the last 5 years, and the average price for a home is still dropping, so where does that leave us? As you can tell from the blue line in the chart below, the median price declines are gradual and not nearly as drastic as the run up in prices that occurred before Q2 2007. Now is still a great time to pick up a good deal and I believe we will see a rebound in prices within just a few quarters.

This chart can be narrowed down to a more specific area, or home feature (age, size, bedrooms, etc...) Let me know if I can do some research for you.

Hotfix for TFS merge error 959168

We acquired a hotfix from Microsoft to fix the following issue: "The destination file may change if you use the "tf merge" command together with the /baseless and /discard options on a computer that has Team Foundation Server SP1 installed" You can find out more about this patch at either http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959168/ or http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/959168

I found out the hard way that this install is not very fast (I had anticipated 30-45 minutes). After two hours and the normal work day shortly commencing, I had no choice but to cancel (and end task) the install and risk whatever state that put us in. The install has a progress bar that quickly made it to nearly the very end (installing the new files went quickly) and then it just sat there (without using any CPU resources on our TFS app tier production machine, but consuming about 50% of our resources on the DB machine). This install shuts down the TFS web sites so that no-one else can access TFS during the install. It then performs updates on the TFS source control database and depending on how many projects you have could take hours (we have over 50 projects).

Hopefully knowing the time restraints will save someone else what I went though. And thanks to a great Microsoft support engineer for his help on this issue. We'll try again on a scheduled weekend outage (since our TFS server is in use almost 24X7) in a few weeks - wish me luck.

Meth, Oh my!

Well one good note in relation to my last post. The Fannie Mae 4 home limit was raised to it's previous limit of 10 financed homes. The requirements for new loans are much stricter and now require 6 months PITI (principal + interest + taxes + insurance) reserve for each rental property as well as a 20% down payment, but these are welcome changes to keep only financially prepared individuals in the game.

So I got an offer accepted on a short-sale property. In the process of doing my due diligence, I paid to have a Meth inspection performed by my inspector at $150. I've never bothered doing this before, but there was evidence of alcohol and cigarettes at the property so I thought it wouldn't hurt. Well the results came back positive with a 1.9 microgram reading. You may be wondering if that is a lot or a little. Well to give you some perspective, the legal limit in Utah is .1 micrograms (so we are 19 times higher than the state limit). Apparently though, this is considered a small contamination and I've since spoken with another invester who was purchasing one with 4.5 micrograms. And if they are actually cooking Meth at the property the contamination can even be much higher than that.

With this new data, I began to call Meth Remediation companies and to my dismay each company gave me a completely different story on the cleanup. I'll summarize what they told me below and I'd love to hear back from anyone that has actually gone through this process before and can give me and any future readers of this blog some advice.

County Health Dept: The county health department representative said that I could clean the property myself and to certify it, I would need to send in a sample of the carpet as well as surface swabs. He said that contractors would all tear out the carpet (which is correct, that is what all three recommended).

Vendor 1: Vendor 1 basically told me that my appraiser was probably someone with a high school education who only had a 30 minute training course on Meth and that his results would likely not even be recognized by the county health department. He recommended retesting the entire house to pinpoint the areas that need to be cleaned. If the cold area return comes back positive, they recommend replacing the heating ducts and he implied simply doing that may allow the property to pass. Vendor 1 said health department should not be giving out recommendations. He also called my appraiser and told him that he may be involved in a lawsuit if I back out of the deal (if the bank decided to sue).

Vendor 2: Vendor 2 told me that if Meth was detected in one part of the house, then the whole house needs to be cleaned. His bid was very reasonable at under $3000 to clean the entire home. The cleaner that he uses is harmful to metal and wood surfaces. He says the heater will likely need to be replaced as it can't be completely cleaned (and it's a metal surface), but that only flexible ducts would need to be replaced. He also said that new or old paint (as well as areas around nail holes) may be damaged.

Vendor 3: Vendor 3 told me that his special cleaner will remove mold, dirt, and Meth and would leave the place looking and smelling clean and fresh. His minimum charge was $5000, but it didn't sound like there would be problems associated with Vendor 2. Vendor 1 claimed that Vendor 3's special cleaner was illegal since he would not disclose it to the EPA and that no chemicals are allowed in the air ducts.

I don't think I could do business with Vendor 1 because he bad mouthed everyone and everything. He was way to arrogant for my style. I liked Vendor 2, but felt that even though he was cheap, it might cost way more in the long run to use him. Vendor 3 was reasonable, but I think I might get one or two more bids before making any decisions. I'll probably ask for references from their last three jobs.