I don't like funerals

As much as I don't like funerals I attended one Saturday that I really appreciated.  It was for the wife of a guy I know.  The guy is Frank Guliuza, and his wife Kathy had died in September. 

I was shocked and surprised at the low attendance.  It had been a while since I had seen Frank, and didn't even realize he had moved out of the state and it was indeed the third such service for Kathy.  Just the same Frank was such an influential person inside the local Southern Baptist community as well as Weber State University and the Utah republican party I did expect a pretty packed house.  Made it seem all the more important to have been there.

I've skipped a number of funerals I really should have attended.  People who I knew better, and who meant more to me than either Frank or Kathy, and yet I didn't attend the funeral.  Today I'm ashamed to say I skipped funerals when the family left behind was going to continue to be in my life, and that should never have happened.  Won't happen again.

Here's what I learned from this latest. 
First - the funeral isn't supposed to be fun or enjoyable. 
Second - attending the funeral isn't always about the person who died. Sometimes your respects to the family remaining is much more important (maybe even change the sometimes to always)
Finally - The funeral is never a place to be seen for the sake of being seen

I won't be skipping any more funerals, at least local funerals where logistics of getting there don't prohibit me going. I'll be more mindful of paying my respects to the family left behind - I have been sincerely lacking in that in the past.  If indeed we are all in this together then we always need to make sure people know what they mean to you, and being there in their time of grief is among the important times for that.

Roy and Weber County Real Estate

My last blog was about the entirety of the real estate market in Weber and Davis Counties.  If you know northern Utah these 2 counties make up a good portion of the state's population so using the entire county it's hard to know how your specific city or neighborhood measures up.

Let's take a look the Roy Utah home market,
203 single family homes on the market - total. 203 homes for sale in Roy.

That's nothing when you see what's next:
The past 30 days
50 homes under contract and 38 SOLD.  That's 88 homes leaving the market because of sales. 
Contrast that against 48 homes new to the market and we're negative 40 for the past 30 days. 
At that rate in 5 months there won't be a home for sale in Roy.

Now let's compare Roy to Weber County as a whole.
1588 homes on the market.
374 were new in the past 30 days. 
During those 30 days 266 went under contract AND 266 SOLD - what a coincidence of numbers right?  That said 532 homes left the market through sales and only 374 were added. 
Again - at that rate in only 10 months there wouldn't be a home left to buy in all of Weber County.

Thinking of selling?  Seems like a good time - there's almost no competition for you.