Fact One: What the Walls Are
Solid masonry carrying the structure, or brick facing over a timber frame that carries it. Two different buildings that look alike from the street.
If it is solid masonry and the fire took the roof or the floors, the walls have lost what was bracing them laterally, and that is a stability question before it is a repair question. If it is a facing, you have a framed house with damaged cladding. The full position is on our page covering the brick and the exemption.
Who Establishes It?
Fact Two: Whether You Still Hold the Exemption
Utah's residential exemption removes 45 per cent of fair market value from the taxable amount, and it requires the property to be a primary residence occupied as a primary domicile for at least 183 consecutive days in a year.
A fire that displaces you threatens that, and the mechanism is administrative. Redirected post creates a mailing address mismatch, which prompts a Residential Property Declaration carrying a 90-day response window under section 59-2-103.5(8). Some counties apply 30 days from notice.
Who establishes it: the county assessor for the county holding your parcel. One call, and it is worth making before the Valuation Notice in July or the Tax Notice in November tells you the answer the hard way.
Why Those Two First
Because every other number depends on them. What the property is worth repaired depends on what repairing means, which depends on the walls. What it costs you to hold the property while deciding depends on the tax, which depends on the exemption.
Owners who get quotes and offers before establishing either are negotiating about a building nobody has characterised, which favours whoever sounds most confident.
What We Do With Your Address
The county parcel record. First, for the build year and which county and city hold the parcel.
The construction. What the walls appear to be, and what a report would need to confirm.
Local sale evidence. What the house would be worth repaired on your street rather than in your area.
The permit history. Including whether any seismic retrofit work has been done, which bears directly on how the walls were tied.
What Comes Back
A written figure with each line visible: finished value, cost of the work, carrying cost and margin. Where the wall position is unresolved, the allowance we have made for it is a stated line rather than folded invisibly into a lower number, so a favourable engineer's report can be held against it.
What If Repairing Beats Selling?
What Never Happens
No fee at any stage. No request that you clear the site, commission a report or repair anything first. No requirement that your claim be settled. No assignment of the contract to a third party. And nothing structural happens to your building before it stops being your building, including debris clearance and chimney work, because on masonry that changes the stability of something you still own.
Common Questions About the Process
How Long Does It Take?
Address to written figure is usually a few days. Closing depends on title. The insurance claim does not have to be settled first.
Do I Need to Be in Utah?
No. Out-of-state owners are common and remote closing is routine. Make sure redirected post is being read.
An Engineer Has Condemned It.
Then say so at the start. We buy condemned buildings and the report makes our figure firmer rather than weaker.