{"id":23712,"date":"2025-09-03T14:34:42","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T14:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/?p=23712"},"modified":"2025-09-03T14:56:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T14:56:26","slug":"santa-fe-realtors-promote-diverse-housing-options-in-housing-strapped-region-2-3-2-2-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-3-3-2-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-4-2-4-2-2-3-2-4-2-2-3-2-2-2-2-3-3-2-2-3-2-2-2-3-2-3-2-2-2-2-3-3-2-2-2-3-2-2-51","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/homepage\/success-story\/utar-im0925","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Legislative Attention Focused on Housing, Utah REALTORS\u00ae Achieve Passage of Priority Bills"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In recent years, the state of Utah had seen the confluence of the worst housing factors in its history.\u00a0 Though the rental sphere has experienced incremental improvements, homeownership still lagged with insufficient inventory and barriers to access.\u00a0 To get homeownership in Utah back on track, the state REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> association launched an ambitious effort to secure legislative policy \u2013 and called it just that.\u00a0 An Issues Mobilization grant<\/a> from the REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> Party helped the \u2018Getting Homeownership in Utah Back on Track\u2019 campaign boost a major victory for existing and aspiring homeowners, with a whopping eleven priority bills signed into law this spring.<\/p>\n

The initiative involved heavy lifting by UAR\u2019s Legislative Committee, which met weekly to evaluate bills according to the association\u2019s stated policy, and actively engaged lawmakers with their support, reports Cate Klundt, Utah REALTORS\u00ae<\/sup>\u2019 Government Affairs Director.\u00a0 The rest of the campaign focused on arming REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> members and brokerages with the information they needed to educate others about the importance of homeownership, and lobby elected officials for the pro-homeownership bills on the table.<\/p>\n

The association strengthened its team of grassroots advocates through a series of events and member-facing marketing campaigns.\u00a0 Early in January, it hosted a policy summit attended by the Governor and House and Senate leadership.\u00a0 The following month, REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> Day on the Hill drew over 450 members to the capitol to rally for favored housing policies.\u00a0 Klundt and her team established a website and a series of digital ads, and, in an old-school touch, they revived \u2018Broker Boxes,\u2019 a concept they\u2019d developed during Covid to disseminate an abundance of printed information along with goodies like local chocolates.\u00a0 Members responded and rose to the occasion, underscoring the advocacy efforts of leadership with their voices from across the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe success of this whole effort, in addition to the legislative win for homeownership, is that it strengthened our relationship with our brokers and engaged our members with our advocacy efforts for the whole range of our housing issues,\u201d states Klundt.\u00a0 \u201cIt showed them not just how we\u2019re working for them, but also that we need them!\u201d<\/p>\n

The new legislation falls into four distinct categories: improving industry practices; encouraging good governance; increasing housing supply and reducing production barriers; and protecting the rights of private property owners.<\/p>\n

One of the most exciting accomplishments, according to Klunt, is the impending development of excess state-owned land parcels discovered through the Utah Department of Transportation.\u00a0 “It\u2019s pretty common, in the natural course of developing a transit project, that some of the land the state has acquired, through empirical demand or other means, remains unused.\u00a0 We\u2019re not talking about massive acreage, but a couple of acres near a train station or bus station, throughout towns and cities all over the state \u2013 that adds up.\u00a0 This land already has infrastructure in place; the cost is already in, so the cost to develop it is lower.\u00a0 Many of these parcels are also downtown-infill locations, so developing them as affordable condos will also increase housing density, so it\u2019s really a win-win!\u201d<\/p>\n

Another major initiative achieved in the raft of housing legislation passed this session is a $20 million down payment assistance program for first-time home buyers, to be managed by the Utah Housing Corporation.\u00a0 An innovative distinction of this program is that its eligibility requirements will be more inclusive, explains Klundt; specifically, it will allow divorced mothers who had previously owned property with their husbands to apply for help.\u00a0 \u201cMany women in Utah are stay-at-home moms, who, if they divorce and want to create a new stable home for their families, would not be eligible for first-time buyer assistance in most programs.\u00a0 We worked to make sure this new infusion of assistance money will be available to this population of homebuyers.\u00a0 It may seem like a small and specific demographic, but making these families eligible is the compassionate thing to do, and it\u2019s something I\u2019d like to see replicated across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

To learn more about how the Utah Association of REALTORS\u00ae <\/sup>promoted legislative solutions for increased housing production, increased access to affordable housing, and increased protections for property owners, contact Government Affairs Director Cate Klundt at cate@utahrealtors.com or 801.676.5250.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a push to realize an ambitious raft of housing policy, Utah REALTORS\u00ae launched a campaign called Getting Homeownership in Utah Back on Track. The effort was a success: all its priority bills passed, the legislature authorized an additional $20 million in funding for first-time homebuyers, and an innovative partnership was formed to develop affordable housing on excess state land. An Issues Mobilization grant from the REALTOR\u00ae Party helped make it happen.","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,33,296],"tags":[414,475,1413],"class_list":["post-23712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-us","category-success-stories","category-success-story","tag-issues-mobilization","tag-utah","tag-utah-realtors"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23724,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23712\/revisions\/23724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}