Sell a Fire Damaged House in Sugar House, Yalecrest or Harvard-Yale

Two Buildings That Look the Same

A solid masonry wall carries the loads. A brick veneer is a facing fixed to a timber frame that carries them instead. From the pavement both are a brick house.

After a fire they are in completely different positions. Losing the roof and floors takes the bracing away from a solid masonry wall; on a veneered house it damages a frame that can frequently be assessed and repaired in the ordinary way. The framework is on our page covering the brick and the exemption.

How Is It Actually Established?

Usually by looking at a window or door opening in section, where the wall's build-up is visible, or by an engineer or mason spending a short time on site. It is one of the cheapest determinations available on a Salt Lake house and one of the most consequential, and most owners have never had reason to ask.

Why It Changes the Offers You Get

Buyers working from photographs cannot tell either, so they assume the unfavourable answer and price for it. That assumption is a deduction sitting in every offer you receive.

A short report establishing that the structure is a timber frame behind a facing removes it. On stock at these values that difference is worth considerably more than the fee.

And If It Is Solid Masonry?

Then you have found out something important cheaply, and the engineer's view of what the walls need becomes the centre of the file rather than a question everyone is guessing at. Either answer is worth having. What costs money is nobody knowing, because uncertainty is priced against you by every buyer at once.

We publish no structural conclusions, wall determinations or values for individual Sugar House or Yalecrest properties. An engineer and local sale evidence answer those.

The Exemption Is Worth More Here

Because the residential exemption removes 45 per cent of fair market value, it is worth more in dollars on a more valuable house.

Owners in these neighbourhoods displaced by a fire therefore have more riding on the 183 consecutive days test and on returning any Residential Property Declaration within the 90 days section 59-2-103.5(8) allows. It is an administrative task with a substantial number attached.

Values Usually Favour Repairing

Where a finished house is worth a great deal, the cost of repair is a smaller proportion of it. On sound stock here an owner doing the work or a rehabber will beat any cash offer including ours, and the written figure says so when that is the position.

Sugar House in Context

Where the oldest masonry sits on steeper ground, see our page about the Avenues and Capitol Hill. Where values run lower on similar stock, see our page for Rose Park and Glendale.

The Numbers That Apply to Brick Bungalows

New unreinforced masonry construction has been prohibited in Utah since the 1970s, and homes built before about 1975 are the ones typically identified. Estimates range from more than 90,000 URM buildings on the Wasatch Front to 175,000 statewide as reported in January 2023.

Section 59-2-103 gives a 45 per cent exemption on 183 consecutive days of occupation; section 59-2-103.5(8) allows 90 days to respond to a declaration, and some counties apply 30 days.

Sugar House Questions

Is My Brick Structural?

Often not, on bungalow stock of this era, and it needs looking at rather than assuming. It is a cheap check with a large consequence.

Will a Report Really Change Offers?

It removes a deduction every buyer is currently making for uncertainty. On these values that is worth well beyond the fee.

Will You Buy in Yalecrest?

Yes, and on repairable stock here we will frequently tell you that listing or repairing beats selling to us.

Sell a Fire Damaged House in Sugar House and Yalecrest