One of the great things about living in the Iron County area is that there are several small towns that we work in besides Cedar City.  One of them is the town of Paragonah, it is approximately 20 miles North of Cedar City and is honestly one of the jewels in Iron County.  The name is pronounced "Paragoonah", which is derived from a Native American word meaning sweet or good water.  This is a photograph to show just how picturesque the town is from Interstate 15.  This photo was taken from atop a bridge crossing I15:

As you can see there are still several farms and ranches in and around Paragonah, but it sets in absolutely gorgeous surroundings. It is a very quaint, and beautiful small town.  

Darcy and I have a deal that we thought would sail through, a great buyer with her financing in place, a town home that she absolutely loves and an accepted offer from Fannie Mae.  The problem is that Fannie Mae doesn't actually own the home yet.  The home was included in the previous owner's bankruptcy which was filed just prior to the actual foreclosure.  

With all of the foreclosures on the market here and everywhere, the Title company initially thought that it was just a clerical error and that Fannie Mae probably owned the home, but that we needed to verify whether it did or not.  Apparently it doesn't, at least not yet, the bottom line is that someone screwed up!  Our buyer is a first time home buyer and was looking forward to the stimulus credit to do some repairs to the unit and was sure that she was going to miss out on this opportunity!

I am glad that Congress and the President agreed to extend this program, I will be honest, this is the only part of the bail out/stimulus package that made sense to me.  I would have agreed with money being spent on rebuilding infrastructure, but that is another topic for another blog.  Anyway, there is a sliver of silver lining for our client with this extension passing, now we have more than 3 weeks to get things worked out.

I do hope that no one else experiences this!  I am also very glad that we have Title Companies that really do a good job!  I guess that this is enough of a rant.  I wish everyone a great weekend!

This will be the last one that I post today.  This is a photo of some ponds in the Mountains East of Cedar City.  It was so peaceful and serene that I wish that I could have spent the week there!  We are lucky to live in such a beautiful area! 

I came across another photo that I wanted to share with everyone after I had already posted the other Sunset. To me, it was too beautiful not to share.  I do hope that everyone will forgive me for doing a separate blog for this photo and that you enjoy this photo!

I have been cleaning out my computer photo files and came across this photo of a sunset.  I will admit that it was taken last Spring, but for some reason, I didn't blog with it.  I like the photo and decided that I would do it today.  I hope that you enjoy it!

Right now in history it seems that there is a lot of doom and gloom prevalent in the world.  It is way too easy to get caught up in the misery of the World.  If we are to rise out of this we need to not fall prey to the doom and gloom philosophy that is permeating our lives.  Regardless of how dark it may seem, we need to look for the silver lining in the clouds of despair that hover over us!

I sat down and figured out our October Sales Statistics for the month of October.  We Had 49 properties sell, the gross sales amount in dollars was $7,856,705.  Not bad, that is up from 25 sales in the previous month.  The Original sales price combined of the sold listings was $8,699,681.  The Final listing price was $7,782,207.  

That meant that we were doing a better job of listing properties correctly, as the sales price was 89% of the Original Listing price.  The Sales price was at 94% of the Final listing price.  Our average Days On Market is 169 days, with the shortest time on Market being 16 days. 

I know that I should have put this information in a graph form, but I spent a lot more time gathering the data than I had intended and am getting pressed for time before an appointment.  I hope that this trend will continue, I think that for at least this month, November, we will see a lot of deals as people were trying to get deals done prior to the end of the stimulus money.

I am hoping that the extension granted will mean that business won't drop off too much during the winter months!  I don't know, we normally slow down down during the winter months.  Just so that buyers know, it is a great time to buy a home, our inventory is still very good and it isn't too bad to move in the winter, I know we have done it a couple of times. 

I thought that I would add another reminder of the summer that we left behind.  It has snowed here for the past two days, and I should go and take photographs, but it is cold, and I am fighting a chest cold.  So I thought that I would remember warmer times, in some sort of positive thinking to help get past this chest cold.

It is a peony, which is a flower that my parents had in abundance in our yard when I was a child.  To me, they have always meant summer as their beautiful flowers make their entrance (at least here) usually around Memorial Day.

This is a photo of our dog Kobi and his half eaten tennis ball as he is hiding under the coffee table.  He had enough playing catch and was not about to share his ball with our other dog, Moira, who is older and not as nimble as Kobi, thereby she couldn't get under the table thus making the ball safe.  

Thus Moira Surrendered to her sofa.

Often, dogs are very similar to children!

We have enjoyed a really nice couple of weeks weather wise.  Yesterday and today we have been receiving snow flurries with some small accumulation here and there.  I am sure that Brian Head will probably get 6 to 10 inches out of this storm.  It isn't all that unusual to have snow at the end of October in the valleys, I can remember a year in Northern Utah where we had 6 or 8 inches before Halloween.  That wasn't a great Trick or Treating year!

That is one thing to remember about this area, we do have all four Seasons.  Autumn will come back for a couple of more weeks after this storm system clears out.  We will then have Winter, which is not my favorite season. Winter typically lasts from the end of November to at least Mid February.  We will have storms come through, but usually things begin to warm up in February.  We generally have a week of really cold temperatures.  (At least for here they're cold, there are many places much, much colder.)  This is generally the first week or so in January when the temperatures hover in the zero degree range.

Springs here are generally nice, we will still have snow storms come through the area which typically will still drop a few inches of snow, then once they clear out it usually warms back to Spring like weather.  The really warm temperatures will generally begin around the end of April to the middle of May, with Summer like Temperatures usually by Memorial Day.  

Summers are usually hot and dry, temperatures will be in the mid 90's most of the Summer, again there is generally a week to 10 days of temperatures over the 100 degree mark.  Then by mid September, the heat begins to subside and cooler nights and pleasant days are the norm.

This is a very general and brief over view of the weather here in Cedar City.  This is not carved in stone, this past summer was mostly cool and wet until nearly August for example.  There is a joke around here that if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes it will change.  Another thing about Cedar City is that we are near the mountains, which means that we do enjoy winds and breezes almost everyday.  

Another to remember if you are going into the mountains, be like the Boy Scouts and Be Prepared!  Good tires and in the winter tire chains are often required if you don't have a 4 Wheel drive vehicle with good tires.  Another thing to keep in mind is that these are mountain roads, and because of the danger are not plowed at night, when in doubt, wait until morning if there are storms in the area.  Because of our elevation even the Interstate can become very treacherous to drive.  

I wrote this blog to give all of our friends an idea of what generally to expect, it is a very beautiful area, but the weather can be bad at times.  Any way I hope that this helps you plan your trips to our area, we do honestly have something for almost everyone because of our 4 Seasons, so come on up and enjoy!