First-home decisions
Joshua ElkingtonSalt Lake City and West Valley City
First Salt Lake home? Start with evidence.
How do I buy my first home in Salt Lake City?
THE WASATCH POST · THE RECORD
Stories worth returning to.
Our home decision guides and business coverage, each with its own page. Archive dates describe the original issue; historical reporting is not a current-events calendar.
OCTOBER 2026 · PORTFOLIO SERIES
Buying, owning & selling
Cash & closing costs
Joshua ElkingtonSalt Lake City and West Valley City
Salt Lake closing costs: follow the cash.
How much cash do I need beyond a down payment in Salt Lake City?
HOA & property records
Oswaldo FreemanSalt Lake City
Salt Lake condos: read the HOA record.
What should I check before buying a Salt Lake City condo with an HOA?
Older-home due diligence
Oswaldo FreemanSalt Lake City
Older Salt Lake home? Check the paper trail.
What should I check before buying an older Salt Lake City home?
Sale & purchase timing
Layton BarneyUtah County: Orem, Provo and American Fork
Sell, buy, move: map the Utah County dates.
Should I sell my Utah County home before buying another?
Seller decisions
Layton BarneyUtah County: Orem, Provo and American Fork
Utah County sale: repair, credit or price?
Should I repair or offer a credit when selling a Utah County home?
BUSINESS & LOCAL OPERATORS
The issue archive
ARCHIVE · June 13, 2026
The Utah's Best roster now has one proof map across three mastheads
After a roster refresh, every member has a shareable public page and a direct verification path across Beehive Biz Pulse, Utah Main Street, and The Wasatch Post.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · June 12, 2026
Prime IV Sandy's awards are the proof layer. The funnel is what happens after the reader believes it.
The Sandy wellness clinic now has a public Best of SLC Bronze Winner listing and South Valley Chamber Small Business Impact Award coverage. Used correctly, those receipts become more than badges: they become the first step in a cross-publication reader journey that also features Fred's Greenwood property without confusing sponsor copy for editorial.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · May 22, 2026
The agentic engineer behind Omni AI: a profile of Sitani Mafi
Fifteen businesses, three publications, one shared memory layer. Sitani Mafi built and operates the Omni AI federation — and the Utah's Best Network is the editorial center of gravity that makes the whole thing legible to the outside world.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · May 19, 2026
How Utah's hydration-bar boom is rewriting suburban retail leases
IV-drip and hydration clinics have become the fastest-leasing category in suburban Utah strip centers. The economics are stranger than they look — and they're displacing tenants you'd assume were stickier.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · May 15, 2026
The Salt Lake barber shop that built a product line without leaving the chair
Love Thy Barber started as a single-chair shop with a strong Instagram. Now it ships product nationally. The founder never took a meeting to make it happen.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · May 12, 2026
The Utah cabinet refinishing shop that's never needed a single ad
Youngs Cabinet Refinishing has been operating in Utah for two decades. They don't run Google ads, don't have a lead service, and still turn away work every spring. Here's how.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · May 8, 2026
How Leifson Built holds a 47-day waitlist without inflating prices
Spring is the test. Most Utah remodelers raise pricing or stretch lead times when April demand spikes. Leifson Built — a Lehi-based custom builder running deck, basement, kitchen, and bath work along the Wasatch Front — did neither this season.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · March 25, 2026
Love Thy Barber's national moment: what happens when a Salt Lake brand breaks out of its geography
A year after we first documented Love Thy Barber's product expansion, the online store is shipping to 38 states and averaging 280 orders a month. The founder still hasn't raised capital, hired a VP of anything, or taken a meeting she didn't need to take.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · January 21, 2026
Leifson Built's third year: what a Lehi contractor looks like when the referral flywheel fully matures
Leifson Built enters 2026 with a 52-day waitlist, a crew of seven, and a referral rate that hasn't dropped below 65% in eighteen months. The operation that started with a neighbor's deck is now the most-referred remodeler in northern Utah County.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · December 16, 2025
Utah's trades contractors are heading into winter with the tightest labor market in five years. Who's managing it well.
Licensed HVAC technicians and journeyman plumbers in the Salt Lake metro are commanding wages 18% above 2022 levels. Archer Mechanical and Mario's Plumbing are handling it differently — and both approaches are working.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · November 11, 2025
Youngs Cabinet Refinishing, two years on: what a twenty-year business looks like when the market gets crowded
New entrants, national franchises, and a remodel boom all hit Youngs' market simultaneously in 2025. The shop handled it the same way it's handled every prior test: by taking fewer jobs at higher quality rather than more jobs at lower.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · September 30, 2025
Utah's IV hydration market is consolidating. The clinics built on retention are winning.
Twelve months after peak expansion, Utah's IV therapy market is thinning. Prime IV's Sandy location — which held pricing and built a 38% repeat rate — is positioned better than the operators who competed on discount.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · August 26, 2025
Archer Mechanical is hiring ahead of demand. After last summer's heat, that's a statement.
Following a summer that stressed every HVAC shop in the Salt Lake metro, Archer Mechanical is adding crew heading into fall. Not because they're scrambling — because they planned for this in March.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · July 8, 2025
Love Thy Barber's national shipping numbers are up 31%. What the product expansion actually looks like from the inside.
A Salt Lake barbershop that started selling product to answer a customer question is now shipping nationally with a 31% year-over-year revenue increase in its online store. The founder didn't plan it this way — which is why it worked.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · June 17, 2025
Slackwater Pizzeria's Yelp Top 10 didn't happen by accident — here's what the kitchen actually looks like
Yelp named Slackwater one of the top ten pizza restaurants in the country for 2025. The Ogden-based chain earns it with a simple formula: consistent product, real staff, priced for repeat business. No ad spend required.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · April 29, 2025
The referral economy in Utah trades: why the best shops turn down more work than they take
Youngs Cabinet Refinishing and Leifson Built don't have marketing budgets. They have referral rates above 60%. A look at the arithmetic that makes turning down work the right business decision.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · March 11, 2025
How Proper Brewing turned a slow Tuesday into the week's most valuable night
Proper Brewing Co. runs 131 Yelp reviews, a 4-star average, and a Tuesday pint night that draws more repeat customers than any other evening. They built it without promotions and without a marketing budget.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · January 28, 2025
Utah's remodel market hit a two-year high in Q4 2024. Here's who actually benefited.
Permit data, contractor licensing records, and operator interviews tell a consistent story: the boom helped the shops that had already built their reputations, and it exposed the ones running on marketing rather than merit.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · December 10, 2024
The SLC plumbing shop that answers emergency calls in 90 minutes and still has capacity for new customers
Mario's Plumbing and Heating has operated in Salt Lake City for over a decade without a single marketing campaign. Their emergency response time and pricing transparency have done the work instead.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · November 19, 2024
The IV hydration clinic in Sandy that's converting 38% of walk-ins to repeats — without discounting
Prime IV Hydration's Sandy location has built one of the highest repeat-customer rates in the Wasatch Front wellness market. They did it by holding the $85 intro price flat when competitors were cutting it, and by treating every first visit as a retention play.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · October 22, 2024
The Salt Lake barber who built a brand before he had a shop
Love Thy Barber started with an Instagram account, a chair, and a product that clients kept asking about. The founder never took a meeting, never raised capital, and never needed to. Here's what the first chapter looked like.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · September 3, 2024
Twenty years of Utah kitchens: how Youngs Cabinet Refinishing built a referral-only business in a market full of lead aggregators
Most contractors in Youngs' space pay for Angi leads or Google Ads. Youngs doesn't. They haven't needed to in two decades, and the reason explains something important about how durable local businesses actually work.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · July 9, 2024
The Utah HVAC operators who didn't raise prices when everyone else did
Summer 2024 brought record heat to the Wasatch Front and record demand for cooling work. Archer Mechanical was one of a handful of SLC-area shops that held pricing for existing customers — and kept their license record clean while doing it.
Read the issue ↗ARCHIVE · May 14, 2024
Before the waitlist: how Leifson Built turned a single spec deck into a Lehi institution
Jason Leifson started with one project, no marketing budget, and a phone number. Two years later he's running the most-referred deck and basement operation on the Wasatch Front.
Read the issue ↗