Salt Lake City Fire Damage Rules: The Brick and the Exemption

What Unreinforced Masonry Actually Is

A URM building has walls of brick, block or stone with little or no internal steel reinforcement. The mortar has frequently degraded over the decades. There may be no proper anchorage between the walls, the floors and the roof. Chimneys tend to be tall and unbraced.

Utah building codes have prohibited new URM construction since the 1970s, so this describes older housing rather than anything recent. Homes built before roughly 1975 are the ones typically identified.

How Much of Salt Lake Is Like This?

Estimates vary with the boundary used and it is a large number on any of them. Salt Lake City Emergency Management has put it at around 144,000 URMs across the Salt Lake Valley. Utah's earthquake programme has cited more than 90,000 vulnerable URM buildings along the Wasatch Front. The Utah Seismic Safety Commission and the Division of Emergency Management reported an estimated 175,000 statewide in January 2023. FEMA has treated the brick housing of Utah, and the Salt Lake Valley in particular, as the region's highest disaster mitigation priority.

Why the Fire Question Follows From the Earthquake One

The reasoning is the same in both directions, which is why the retrofit programme tells you what a fire does.

Salt Lake City's Fix the Bricks programme, funded through FEMA pre-disaster mitigation grants, emphasises two retrofit techniques. The first is strengthening the roof-to-wall connection, so that walls and roof mutually support each other against collapse. The second is bracing chimneys to prevent them toppling.

Both address the same underlying weakness: a URM wall relies on the roof and floor structure to hold it in place laterally. Roofs and floors pulling away from walls is the mechanism by which these houses collapse.

So What Does a Fire Do to That?

It attacks precisely that connection. A fire that consumes roof framing and floor joists removes the diaphragms and the ties that were bracing the masonry, while leaving the masonry standing. The result is a tall unreinforced wall with nothing holding it laterally, which is a materially more dangerous object than the same wall was the week before, and it does not look any different from the street.

We publish no structural assessments, wall determinations or safety conclusions for any individual property. Whether a particular wall is stable after a fire is a question for a structural engineer on site, and it is not one to resolve by looking at photographs or by standing next to it.

The Practical Consequences

Keep away from the fall zone. An unbraced masonry wall can fail outward as well as inward, and the ground it would reach is wider than people assume.

Do not lean anything on it. Ladders, scaffolding, boarding fixed back to the brick, tarpaulins tensioned against it. Anything that puts lateral load into an unbraced wall.

Get an engineer rather than a builder first. A contractor quotes work; an engineer says whether the wall stays up. On this stock those are different questions and the second comes first.

Retrofit and repair may overlap. Where a house is being put back, the roof-to-wall connection has to be rebuilt anyway, which is the same work the retrofit programme funds. Whether any assistance is available for your property is worth asking the city about rather than assuming, and the programme has operated with a waiting list.

Solid Masonry or Brick Facing

The distinction that decides whether any of this applies, and most owners do not know which they have.

A solid masonry wall carries the structure. A brick veneer over a timber frame is a facing, and the timber frame behind it is what carries the loads. After a fire those two buildings are in completely different positions, and from the street they can look identical.

It is established by looking at an opening in section, or by an engineer or mason. It is the first thing worth establishing on an older Salt Lake house and it costs very little.

The Second Half: The Residential Exemption

Article XIII section 3 of the Utah Constitution allows county assessors to exempt from taxation 45 per cent of the fair market value of residential property and up to one acre of land. Section 59-2-103 of the Utah Code implements it: a residential exemption equal to a 45 per cent reduction in value, so tax is paid on 55 per cent of fair market value.

The exemption was enacted in 1982 at 25 per cent, following a constitutional amendment passed by Utah voters that year which permitted a maximum of 45 per cent, and was raised in increments to 45 per cent in 1995.

What Has to Be True to Keep It?

The property must be a primary residence, defined as a home serving as the occupant's primary domicile for at least 183 consecutive days in a year. The occupant may be the owner, the owner's spouse, another family member, or a tenant. Only one exemption may be claimed per household in the state. Vacation homes, second homes, recreational cabins and property used for transient or nightly rental do not qualify.

How a Fire Threatens It

Not through any rule about fire. Through the ordinary consequences of being displaced.

The occupancy test. A house that burns and stands empty for the balance of the year has not been anybody's primary domicile for 183 consecutive days.

The address mismatch. A displaced owner redirects their post. Where the mailing address differs from the physical address, section 59-2-103.5(8) requires a Residential Property Declaration to be submitted, within 90 days of the date of the letter.

The consequence of silence. Failure to complete and return the declaration results in losing the exemption and a significant increase in property tax. Some counties operate a shorter window and will remove the exemption if the form is not returned within 30 days of notice.

What Triggers a Review

Utah law amended by Chapter 323 of the 2019 General Session, and Senate Bill 13 of the same session, requires an application where a property changes hands, where non-residential property becomes residential, or where the county has reason to believe the property may no longer qualify.

That last limb is the one that reaches a fire file, and it does not require anybody to be unreasonable about it. An empty damaged house with the owner's post going elsewhere is precisely a property a county might reasonably believe no longer qualifies.

Is There a Way to Keep It While Displaced?

Potentially, and it turns on the definition rather than on any concession. Because a tenant may be the qualifying occupant, a property that is habitable and let year-round to a Utah-domiciled tenant can continue to qualify. There is also a part-year provision under sections 59-2-102 and 59-2-103 for property that becomes residential during the calendar year, where it is used as a primary residence for 183 or more consecutive days in that year. Both are questions for the county assessor about your circumstances rather than assumptions to make.

When You Would Find Out

The Valuation Notice arrives at the end of July and the Tax Notice around the start of November, and both indicate whether the exemption applies.

Which means an owner who lost it through a declaration they did not return may not discover the fact for months, by which point the year is largely gone.

Your Options, Compared

Repair and return. Restores the occupancy position and rebuilds the roof-to-wall connection at the same time.

Repair and let. Keeps the exemption alive through a qualifying tenant where the property is habitable.

Sell. Transfers both questions, and a buyer who understands the masonry position prices it differently from one who does not.

Leave it empty and answer nothing. The route where an unbraced wall stands over a property whose taxable value has nearly doubled.

Across Salt Lake City and the Front

Construction era varies sharply. The oldest brick neighbourhoods are covered under the Avenues and Capitol Hill and Sugar House and Yalecrest, the west side under Rose Park and Glendale, and the centre under downtown and Central City. Further pages deal with the south valley cities and the wider Wasatch Front.

Those areas include Murray, Sandy, South Jordan, West Jordan, Draper, Midvale and Taylorsville in the valley, with Bountiful, Layton, Ogden, Provo, Orem and Lehi beyond it.

The full index is on our service area index.

Rules Questions

Is My House URM?

If it predates the 1970s and has masonry walls, quite possibly. Whether the masonry is structural or a facing is the question, and it needs looking at rather than guessing.

Has a Declaration Been Sent to Me?

Check your redirected post. The window runs 90 days from the date on the letter under section 59-2-103.5(8), and some counties apply a shorter period.

Can a Tenant Preserve the Exemption?

The definition allows a tenant to be the qualifying occupant. Whether it works in your circumstances is a question for the county assessor.

Primary Sources

Utah Code sections 59-2-102, 59-2-103 and 59-2-103.5, and rule R884-24P-52
Utah State Constitution Article XIII section 3; Chapter 323 and Senate Bill 13, 2019 General Session
Salt Lake City Fix the Bricks programme; FEMA case study on the programme
Wasatch Front Unreinforced Masonry Risk Reduction Strategy, March 2021
Utah Guide for the Seismic Improvement of Unreinforced Masonry Dwellings