22 new properties available at Utah Vacation Rentals

It's been awhile since I last posted and I wanted to introduce some wonderful new vacation rentals available on the website. There have been 22 new cabins, homes and condos listed since I last wrote. I will highlight each one of these properties over the next couple of blog entries.

Here are some of the new properties listed on Utahvacationproperties.com

#1 Location - Park City, Utah
Snowblaze Lodge located next to Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, Utah.
Located just steps from all the winter/summer action that this world class vacation town has to offer. View the Park City condo here.

#2 Location - St. George, Utah
Stunning Southwest Utah Condo located near St. George Utah. Incredible Views!
Central to everything including Golf, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and Snow Canyon State Park. Learn more here.

#3 Location - Timberlakes, Utah (Just outside beautiful Heber City).
When you think of a mountain vacation, a cozy Chalet is just the ticket. This 5 bedroom 2 bath cabin located in the mountains near Heber City offers the best of all 4 seasons. Snowmobiling, sledding and snowshoeing from your door in the winter and hiking, ATV'ing, bird watching and more on site! Or, take the short drive into Heber City or Park City for fine dining and world class activities. Learn more here.

#4 Location - Escalante, Utah - (Dixie National Forest and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument)
This large vacation home in the heart of the Grnad Staircase Escalante National Monument sleeps 12 people!. It has 5 bedrooms, 3.5 baths and is a 2,500 sq ft log home. I don't know about you but a log home just makes me feel like I'm on vacation even if I'm sitting still and relaxing inside. Learn more about this beautiful Escalante vacation home here.

#5 Location - Junction, Utah ( Paiute ATV Trail)
Central Junction location for access to all that southern Utah has to offer. This vacation property is ideal for access to the world reknown Paiute ATV trail that offers hundreds of miles of trails through breathtaking scenery.
The 3,600 sq ft home offers 6 bedrooms and 3.5 baths and can sleep 16 or more.
To view this Junction Utah vacation home click here.

Well, that's all for this post today. I'll be highlighting the other new properties in the days to come. If you own a Utah vacation property and have not listed yet, why not take advantage of a free listing today? No commission, no charges.

Thanks for looking!

Chris Petty
Utahvacationproperties.com

Two new Park City, Utah Vacation rentals.

Welcome new Vacation property owners. We have two new listings so far this week.
The first is a wonderful vacation condo that is slopeside to The Canyons Resort in Park City, Utah at Westgate Resort. It is a July 4th week for 2008. If you didn't know already, July in Park City is amazing. Cool temps, fireworks and free shows right in the village forum at The Canyons. Take a hike up the resorts trails during the day or ride the gondola up to 8,000 ft mid mountain and hike or bike among the pines and aspens. Inquire about this property from the listing page.

The second property we have this week is a condo located at the Racquet Club in the heart of Park City. It is a central location to just about everyting including the golf course (on site), tennis and racquetball courts plus the free bus system stops right out your door to whisk you away to Main Street, Deer Valley, Park City Mountain resort or The Canyons. Inquire about this property from the listing page.

See you in the mountains!
Chris
Utahvacationproperties.com

UTAH VACATION HOME FREE LISTINGS

List your Utah vacation home or condominium for free. No obligation or catches and you can remove your listing at any time. Upload 8 pictures, a link to your website and information about your property. Guests can contact you directly from your listing!

Do you want free advertising for your Vacation Property?? Create your listing now.

Best of luck this 2008 rental year!

Chris Petty
Utahvacationproperties.com

New Prospector Studio Listing in Park City

First of all I want to welcome Stacey who just listed her Prospector Square studio for rental on Utahvacationproperties.com . It's currently available for $75 a night for the rest of the ski season. It has a great in town location, on the free bus line and is only 1.4 miles from Park City Mountain Resort!

We've had a great snow season so far here in Park City and we're really enjoying the spring skiing right now. If you want to visit Park City, get some great skiing or riding in and not spend a lot of money then contact Stacey about her Prospector Square studio and come visit us!

Enjoy the mountains.

Chris Petty
Utahvacationproperties.com
info@utahvacationproperties.com

Utahvacationproperties.com Introduction

I feel very fortunate to live in the state of Utah and can definitely understand why people love to vacation here. There is so much to do in the "great outdoors" and so much great weather to do it in. In the spring, summer and fall we see weeks of sunshine and long days to play outside. In the winter we receive enormous amounts of the greatest snow on earth to go skiing, snowboarding, cross country, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, tubing and even horse drawn sleigh rides! The combination of great weather, easy access and lot's of activities make for a great vacation spot.

I first visited Utah in the summer of 1998 and fell in love with it. I quit my job and moved out the following summer of 1999 and have been in Park City ever since. I think Park City, Deer Valley, Snowbird and Alta are pretty well known in the country/internationally for it's skiing but I think many people are now discovering the treasures the rest of this state has to offer vacation-wise. Word is out about the other pristine, uncrowded ski areas like Powder Mountain, Snowbasin, Solitude, Brighton and even Brian Head for the Vegas crowd.
Moab has long been known as the "mecca" for mountain biking but folks have discovered that there is so much to do there besided biking like world class 4X4 offroading, river rafting the colorado, dirt biking, road biking, hiking, archaeology sites and not to mention having Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park right nearby it's no wonder the explosion in Popularity of the town of Moab. A website with lots of info is here. Speaking of National Parks, how about Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park in southern Utah? Capitol Reef National Park, Grand Staircase Escalante, Natural Bridges National Monument or Golden Spike National Historic Site ring a bell? So much to do, so little time is what I fear of living in this state :o)

I've felt for a long time that many of the more popular destinations in Utah have been inadequately represented online. Your visitors have to weed through 1,000's of different hotel/condo and home listings on the popular and broadly focused rental sites like vrbo.net and greatrentals.com. I felt like a website featuring just Utah rentals would more affectively advertise Vacation Rental owners, give them more bang for their buck and allow your visitors to find listings quicker as they are only looking at Utah. I also felt like some of the smaller properties in the quieter locations could get more exposure and have an affordable, set yearly cost of $75 to list their property. The result is this website.

If you've made it this far in the blog and want to leave a comment, suggestion or any criticism's please feel free to chime in.

Till next time,

Chris
Utahvacationproperties.com
info@utahvacationproperties.com

Vacation Rentals Phoney Check Scam

It surprises me that this type of fraud still works but apparently it does. I'll give a little background on this scam and then explain how these criminals are targeting Vacation Rental Owners like you now.

Some Background:
Most of us at one time or another has received an email from some Barrister or attorney in Nigeria or Africa that represents the estate of some wealthy person who you are distantly related to that died. Their offer to you is to take possession of the phoney bank wire for the estate of $5million or so dollars at your bank. In return you send them out $4.0 million dollars to the attorneys bank in Africa and you keep the tidy commission of $1,000,000. Sounds great doesn't it? Aren't you excited when your bank account grows from $10,000 to $5,010,000 !
So, you send out a bank wire to Africa for $4 million bucks and start thinking about what you're gonna do with all the extra loot. Unfortunately, quite quickly you get notice from the bank that the wire for $5million coming into your bank account bounced and you actually received $0 to your account. Now, you've sent out the $4million to the other bank and the bank can only cancel $3,990,000 of it since you actually had $10,000 in there. You've lost your $10,000 and subject to a bunch of bank fees. Welcome to the Nigerian email scam. Thousands of people fall prey to this each year.

Targeting Vacation Rental Owners:
What kind of numbskull would fall victim to that type of scam I bet you're thinking? Well, plenty of smart, educated vacation rental owners are falling victim to a sneaky form of this. So, watch out and here's how it works.

You get a friendly email inquiring about particulars for your Vacation rental home. How many bedrooms, the availability and rates. You respond with all the info and quickly get a reply asking if you can rent out your place for entire month or two months! Wow! That is some good money.
You agree and provide a dollar cost for the entire rental period they requested. Let's say it's $4,000 total. They agree to figure and they will be sending you a check. In some cases they tell you up front that they will be sending you a check for say $5,000 or maybe a check will just arrive for $5,000. It looks legit and is even Bank Certified. You quickly get an email where the person has explained their mistake and could you deposit the check and send out the difference immediately! They are going to be in great financial hardship because of this error, perhaps.
Oh, and their emails are usually peppered with references to their Christianity and God. These must be good people, right?

So, you send out a check for $1,000 right away to cover the mistake. A week later you find out the $5,000 check was fake. You got $0 from this deal. Oh, but you sent out $1,000 already and it has been cashed you see from your online banking statement. This is and many variations are being used against vacation rental owners across the world. You'll also see this same scenario being used for cars, tv's, bikes etc.... It is very popular and prevelant because it works and preys on the generosity and kindness of so many good people.

What to do:
If you think that this could be happening to you and you've received an inquiry like this first do not send any funds out. Second, insist that the payer use a credit card. If they give you one make sure to verify the purchase and get a confirmation through your merchant provider. If they refuse to do the credit card insist that they send you only the amount for the reservation and tell them you'll need 10 to 14 days to verify the deposit. In most cases this will stop the process and you will never hear from them again.

Resources:
Information from the FTC - http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/nigeralrt.shtm

Law enforcement agencies around the world are all too aware of "419"/"Nigerian" scam activity. As long as you do not respond to the e-mail or letter, it is safe to delete it or throw it away.

The U.S. Secret Service has instructed anyone in the US who has lost funds because of this scam to forward appropriate written documentation to:

U.S. Secret Service Financial Crimes Division
950 H Street, NW,
Washington, DC 20001.
(202) 406-5850

Or send email using the Secret Service form ordirect to 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov

If you have received a letter, but have not lost any monies to this scheme, please fax a copy of that letter to (202) 406-5031.

And finally, there is more information here at the Secret Service Online Crimes Division
http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/

Take care and be safe,

Chris
Utahvacationrentals.com

Warm week ahead in Park City. The storms will come....

I've lived in Park City, Utah for 8 years now. It seems every winter is different in how it starts out. I love snow and want it to just dump constantly to feed my powder addiction. In years past I've been hiking Deer Valley with my snowboard in mid October with snow up to my waist. Other years I've been hiking at 8,000ft in tall grass, butterflies fluttering and summer like temps with no snow, in late November. We wondered how could the ski resorts ever hope to open. Well, 4 days later from my hike there were avalanche conditions from a major two day storm. It went from late summer conditions to avalanche conditions in days.

Amazing how it can change so quickly.
In the meantime, I'm going to go take a mountain bike ride and enjoy the cool temps. The snow will be here soon....

I posted a couple of photos I took recently in the Uinta National Forest which is right next door to Park City, Utah. If you ever visit, take a day trip up to this high altitude mountain wonderland.

Chris
http://www.utahvacationproperties.com/

http://www.gomoab.com/




Provo River Falls