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The Local

Moving here Syracuse

A step in the ground the city names itself, and the half of the city that sits on each side of it

Living on the Bluff, and which half of this city you end up in.

Syracuse City's own history page says the Bluff shoreline was formed by the ancient lake and runs roughly north and south across the city, and everything about how this place is arranged follows from that one sentence. The ground falls about a hundred and twenty five feet from the northeast corner to the maze farm on 4000 West. The town centre moved onto the high side in the 1890s and stayed. Two of the city's four sides are unincorporated county and will not fill in. And the city assigns your no watering day by quadrant. This is the trade, measured, with the things to check at the address rather than at the city.

By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah Updated August 2026

Southern Utah is where I actually work, four hours south of the west shore of Davis County, so these pages are researched rather than lived. What is on them was read where it is issued: the city's own history, parks, museum, fire, police, secondary water, fireworks and recreation tax pages at syracuseut.gov; Utah State Parks on the island's fee card and its own dated history; the state road layer and the Utah Department of Transportation's 2024 traffic counts for the three routes that end at the causeway; the Census geocoder for the city line; the United States Geological Survey elevation service for the ground itself; the Church's own media kit for the temple; and the operator's own site for the farm. Every figure carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent takes the ground level work.

The live question


What is the Bluff, and does it matter which side of it you buy on?

It is a step in the ground and the city names it itself. Syracuse City's history page, checked in August 2026, opens with the ancient lake and says in one sentence that the Bluff shoreline was formed and extended roughly north and south across Syracuse. Bluff Road follows it, Bluff Ridge Park and Bluff Ridge Elementary are named after it, and everything east and north of it is what the same page calls the bench.

How much of a step is a question nobody has answered, so here is the measurement. Running the United States Geological Survey elevation point query service west to east across the city at latitude 41.0750 on 20 August 2026, the ground reads about 4,226 feet at longitude 112.100 west, about 4,235 feet at 112.080, about 4,249 feet at 112.065, about 4,267 feet at 112.055, about 4,285 feet at 112.045 and about 4,300 feet at 112.040. That is roughly seventy five feet of rise across about three and a half miles, and it is a slope rather than a cliff: about ten to fifteen feet in each quarter mile through the middle of the city.

The whole city runs from about 4,225 feet at the maze farm on 4000 West to about 4,350 feet at a sample point near the northeast corner, which is a hundred and twenty five foot spread across four miles. So the honest answer to which side to buy on is that the Bluff is not a decision about a view, it is a decision about which half of the city you are in. The high half is the old town, the civic block, the schools and the subdivisions. The low half is the lake plain, the last farms, the nature park and the road west. What follows is what changes between them and what does not.

The Syracuse side, in numbers

125 ft

of fall from the high corner to the low one, across four miles

7

services on one monthly utility statement

4

watering quadrants, each with its own dry day

2

of four city sides that are unincorporated county ground

Two halves


The bench and the plain, set against each other on the things that actually change.

Everything below is measured, published or geocoded rather than impressionistic, and every figure carries where it came from. Prices and current listings live on the practical city guide.

The bench, east and north of Bluff RoadThe plain, west and south of itWhat it changes for a household
ElevationAbout 4,267 to 4,350 feet on the United States Geological Survey elevation service, rising toward the northeast cornerAbout 4,225 to 4,250 feet, falling toward the causeway and the county lineRoughly a hundred feet between the two ends of the city. It is a slope of ten to fifteen feet per quarter mile rather than a visible edge
What the city's own history says about itThe bench, where dry farming appeared about 1887 and where the brick school house, the chapel and the shops went up through the 1890sLower Syracuse, where the first one room school was built below the Bluff in 1885The city publishes that the population growth shifted from lower Syracuse to the bench. The town centre has been on the high side since about 1900
What is on it nowThe civic block on 1700 and 1900 South, the high school, the junior high, two elementary schools, the temple site and most of the subdivisionsJensen Nature Park at 3176 South Bluff Road, the fire station, the golf course, the maze farm and the last working groundA bench address is a town address. A plain address is an edge address, and the edge is county ground
The boundary beyond itWest Point on the north, Clearfield due east at the Antelope Drive line, Layton east and southeast below about the 1400 South lineUnincorporated Davis County along the whole southern frontage west of about longitude 112.040 west, and along the whole western sideThe municipal sides are already built. The county sides are the lake and the farms and they are not going to fill in
The roadSR-108 on 2000 West and on Antelope Drive east of it, counted at 28,000 vehicles a day in 2024 between 1000 West and 2000 WestSR-127 west of 2000 West, counted at 18,000 falling to 3,000 on the last half mile before the state highway endsThe busiest road in the city is on the bench, not the plain. The plain gets the exceptions instead: two heavy Saturdays and six weeks of autumn evenings
Water inside the lineNone5,969 square metres in the whole city, about an acre and a half, on the Census measurementThere is no lakefront in Syracuse in any legal sense. What the west side has is a horizon over ground the city does not contain
The oldest thing on itA red brick school house of 1892 and a chapel of about 1898, both long since replacedA national emigrant road used from August 1848, marked in 1989, twenty eight years before the first furrow was cutThe low side has the older history and the high side has the older buildings, which is the opposite of what most people expect
Watering quadrantNortheast waters no Wednesdays; southeast waters no FridaysNorthwest waters no Tuesdays; southwest waters no ThursdaysThe split is on Antelope Drive and 2000 West, so the quadrant is a property level fact and one of the first to check

Elevations from the United States Geological Survey elevation point query service, checked in August 2026, sampled at published addresses and at a west to east transect at latitude 41.0750. Boundary attributions from Census geocoder coordinate probes on the same date. Traffic from the Utah Department of Transportation's 2024 rounded annual average daily traffic layer. The bench and lower Syracuse framing, the 1885 and 1892 school buildings and the 1890s shift are Syracuse City's own history page in its own words. Water area is the Census Bureau's.

Which ancient shoreline this is, and which two it is not

The city says the Bluff shoreline was formed by the ancient lake and does not say which stage of it. That gap is worth closing carefully, because the easy mistake is to import the figure that gets used for the bench along the mountain front further east. The Utah Geological Survey publishes the Provo shoreline in this county at an altitude measured where it crosses Hillfield Road at about 4,810 feet, and the Bonneville level higher still. No ground in Syracuse is anywhere near either: the highest reading anywhere in the city is about 4,350 feet.

What the survey does publish that sits in the right range is the Gilbert episode, when the lake rose about fifty feet above modern levels roughly 11,600 years ago and reached altitudes of about 4,250 to 4,255 feet. Bluff Road at the nature park reads about 4,250 feet on the elevation service, and the 1989 pioneer marker on the same road reads about 4,251 feet. Those numbers land inside that band, which is an observation and not an identification, and this page stops there rather than naming a shoreline the survey has not named here.

The practical version needs none of that. Whatever formed it, the step is real, the road follows it, three named places take their name from it, and the town moved onto the high side of it in the 1890s and stayed. The reason to know the elevations is not geology, it is that a hundred and twenty five foot spread across a four mile city is enough to matter for drainage, for wind exposure on open ground, and for how far a west facing window sees.

The details

Where Bluff Road, running roughly north and south across the western half of Syracuse. The 1989 pioneer marker is somewhere on it: three addresses are published and they disagree
From downtown About a mile and a quarter southwest of City Hall at 1979 West 1900 South to the nature park at 3176 South Bluff Road, four or five minutes, and that is an estimate rather than a published figure
Season Year round. The trail along the corridor is paved and mostly flat, and the city publishes trail access as an amenity at two of its parks
Cost Free. There is nothing to book, nothing to pay and no gate anywhere on the corridor
Time needed Half an hour to drive it end to end. Longer on foot, and the paved path continues north into the next city, which owns that page

Getting there

From City Hall the simplest approach is south and west onto Bluff Road and then south along it. The road rides the step, so the ground falls away to the west and rises behind you to the east for its whole length. The south trailhead of the paved path is at Jensen Nature Park, 3176 South Bluff Road, where the city publishes a 0.59 mile loop and trail access; the north trailhead is in West Point, off 1300 North west of 4000 West, and that end of the corridor belongs to West Point's own companion.

Before you go

  • The pond at the nature park, its rules, its species list and its limits are all on the county lakeside parks page, which carries them in full and dates them. Nothing here repeats any of it.
  • The nature park's visitor centre is published by the city as an event space with a kitchen, restrooms, tables and chairs, rather than as a staffed interpretive centre.
  • The 1989 marker's location is published three ways and none of them can be treated as settled. Two of the three are on Bluff Road near 2500 or 2700 South and the third does not geocode at all.
  • The paved corridor runs on into the next city and both ends are worth walking, but the mileage on the north end is West Point's published figure and no total for the whole corridor is published by anybody.

The bill


Seven services on one statement, a dry day assigned by quadrant, and a paper fee starting in November.

The city's utility billing page, checked in August 2026, lists what arrives on one monthly statement and it is longer than most: culinary water, waste removal, park maintenance, secondary water, sewer, storm drain and street lighting. Park maintenance as a line item on a household utility bill is unusual and it is worth noticing, because it is the same city that publishes what its recreation tax spent on each individual playground. Garbage and green waste are collected by a private company under contract, green waste is voluntary and recycling is bundled into the waste collection. The consequence of falling behind is spelled out too: the city directs Public Works to shut off culinary water and sends accounts to collections.

The live item on that page is dated and small and it will catch people. From the November 2026 statement, a $2.00 monthly fee applies to any customer still receiving a paper bill, to cover processing, printing and postage, and customers enrolled in paperless billing are not charged it. The city's own deadline to switch and avoid it is 1 October 2026. That is the kind of thing that appears on a utility page and nowhere else, and anybody setting up an account here in the autumn of 2026 should deal with it on day one.

The bigger money question in this city is irrigation, and Syracuse answers it more completely than most. The secondary water page gives a 2026 season of 8 May to 18 September, asks residents to close their own user valve by 1 April so the system can be pressurised without filling their pipes, and advises against booking sod or seed until water is confirmed at the property. It then publishes a schedule rather than a suggestion: two days out of five in early May and in September, three out of five from Memorial Day to Labor Day, nothing between ten in the morning and six at night, nothing on Sunday, and one assigned dry day per quadrant with Antelope Drive and 2000 West as the dividing lines. Northwest is Tuesday, northeast Wednesday, southwest Thursday, southeast Friday. Known leaks must be repaired within fifteen days of notification, wasting water is prohibited under ordinance 4-25-130, and the city states that usage is monitored and enforcement of wasteful watering will occur.

Two further things on that page matter at the property rather than at the city. The first is metering: the city cites Utah Code 73-10-34, the bill commonly called HB 242, requiring a meter on each home's secondary line by 2030, and says crews have already started installing them and will continue over the next few years. Whether a specific property has been metered yet is an address question with a bill attached to it. The second is the plumbing itself: the city owns a valve to the property line, the resident is expected to install another beside it, the city recommends a filter after the shut off because the water is untreated, and the city will turn the water on for you if you call Public Works on 801-825-7235. The city also states plainly that secondary water is non potable, unfiltered and untreated, that it carries debris and higher dissolved solids, and that drinking or playing in it can make you sick.

What the city taxes, published to the second decimal place

The combined sales tax rate is 7.25 per cent and the city publishes all nine components: state sales and use 4.85, local sales and use 1.00, county option 0.25, county option transportation 0.25, mass transit 0.25, mass transit additional 0.25, transportation infrastructure 0.25, supplemental state 0.05, and recreation, arts and parks 0.10. They sum to exactly 7.25. The city adds a note that is easy to miss and worth having: the local sales and use tax is the only sales tax paid directly to Syracuse City, and it is distributed half on point of sale and half on a statewide formula.

The franchise taxes are published on the same page at 6 per cent each for cable, energy utility and telecommunications, which is a real line on a Utah household's utility bills and appears on no summary of this city. On property tax the city publishes no rate and explains the state's revenue based system instead, along with a sentence about itself that is unusually candid for a municipal page: although Syracuse City does not share the same sales tax base as other Davis County cities, its property tax rate remains comparable.

That candour has a recent history behind it. The city held a Truth in Taxation hearing on 13 August 2024 at City Hall on a proposal to increase property tax revenue by $1,025,000, which the notice described as about $102 a year on the average household and reported as a 20.3 per cent increase on a $554,000 home, from $503.06 to $605.13. That notice text was surfaced through search rather than read from the minutes, the outcome was not retrieved, and nothing for 2026 was found, so treat all three of those as items to check at the city's own agenda archive rather than as settled. The $554,000 figure is the state's example value in a tax notice and is not a Syracuse price.

Culinary water, waste, park maintenance, secondary water, sewer, storm drain and street lighting. One statement, seven lines, and a dry day by quadrant.

Who answers, and what the address means


Two departments of its own, a house number measured from the next city, and a marker nobody can place.

Syracuse runs its own fire department and its own police department, which makes it different from some of its immediate neighbours and is the first thing to establish rather than assume. The fire department's own page describes an all hazards service covering Syracuse City, unincorporated Davis County and Antelope Island State Park, with automatic aid to three neighbouring agencies and mutual aid to seven more in the county; 30 full time and 18 part time firefighters plus three battalion chiefs, a fire marshal, a deputy chief and a chief, every firefighter licensed as an advanced emergency medical technician or a paramedic, on three shifts of 48 hours on and 96 off with stations staffed daily by twelve. It publishes two external assessments: a gold level recognition from the Utah Fire and Rescue Academy for training and certification, and an Insurance Services Office Public Protection Classification of Class 2, which the department describes as one of 31 in Utah, improved from a previous Class 3. The police department is at 1751 South 2000 West and dates itself from 1950, the year the city was incorporated.

The address itself is the orientation fact that catches every newcomer. Syracuse does not have its own street grid: every road segment inside the city limits carries Clearfield as its address system in the state road layer, which is why City Hall is at 1900 South, Antelope Drive is 1700 South and the nature park is at 3176 South in a city whose own centre is nowhere near a zero point. Four adjacent municipalities in this corner of the county run on the same grid, and the city that grid is named for owns that story; its companion on the county hub tells it properly. What matters here is only the practical part, which is that a Syracuse house number tells you where you are relative to somewhere else, and it says nothing at all about anybody who lives on the street.

Schools are facts and links and nothing more. The city is in the Davis School District and the district's own boundary tool is the only authority on which school an address is assigned to; assignment changes, and boundaries in a city with three municipal neighbours on two sides are structurally likely to weave. This companion names school buildings only where the city itself does: the high school auditorium at 665 South 2000 West appears in the city's own June schedule, Syracuse Elementary appears in the city's parking notes for Founders Park, and Bluff Ridge Elementary takes its name from the same step in the ground this page is about. No quality judgment about any school appears anywhere on these pages and third party ratings are the reader's to consult.

The one thing on this corridor that genuinely cannot be settled is where the 1989 pioneer marker stands. Three locations are published. The 1989 dedication notice put it on the Bluff Road chapel grounds and gave the address in a form that reads 2500 West Bluff Road. A marker database entry, transcribed from a photograph dated 23 September 2018, places it on Bluff Road 0.3 miles north of 2700 South and gives a nearby postal address of 2500 South Bluff Road, with a coordinate that geocodes inside Syracuse city at about 4,251 feet. A more recent secondary account puts it at 3700 South Bluff Road in northwest Syracuse, which the Census geocoder does not match at all and which is internally odd in a city whose numbers rise southward. Two of the three agree that it is on Bluff Road near 2500 or 2700 South. This page prints the disagreement rather than picking a winner, because a wrong address on a monument is the one error a reader will drive to.

Three things in this city are property level questions rather than city level ones, and two of them change what a summer costs. The first is the watering quadrant. Which of the four you are in is determined by Antelope Drive and 2000 West, it fixes your assigned dry day, and the city publishes that usage is monitored and that enforcement of wasteful watering will occur. The second is the secondary water meter. State law requires one on every home's secondary line by 2030 and city crews are installing them progressively, so whether a particular property has been metered yet, and what happens to the bill when it is, is a question for the property and not for the city. The third is the paper statement fee: from the November 2026 bill, customers still receiving a mailed statement are charged $2.00 a month, and the city's own deadline for switching to paperless and avoiding it is 1 October 2026. None of the three can be answered from any page, including this one, and all three are free to check at the city's own utility pages.

Living with it


A four mile square with two open sides and a step in the middle of it.

The honest summary of a Syracuse address is that it is compact, close to square and finished on two sides. The state boundary layer gives the city a single ring spanning about 4.2 miles east to west and 4.0 north to south, and the causeway runs off the west edge of that square like a handle. Two of the four sides are other municipalities and already built up against the line. The other two, the whole southern frontage west of about longitude 112.040 west and the entire western side, are unincorporated Davis County, and they are the lake side and the farm side. That is the durable thing about this city and it is why the western horizon stays open.

What that costs is that Syracuse is dense. The 2020 count of 32,141 people on 10.40 square miles is about 3,090 to the square mile, the highest measured anywhere in this phase of the county, and the state municipal layer's most recent estimate of 35,561 is higher again against a county where most cities were flat or falling in the same estimate year. A city cannot grow outward past a county line and a lake, so what happens instead is that the remaining ground inside the limits fills in. The last of it is on the plain, west and south, which is where the working farms and the maze still are.

What the parks inventory tells you about the same trade is worth a paragraph, because it is the amenity half of a dense city. The city's parks page listed twenty named sites on 20 August 2026, including a community centre with a walking track, a cemetery, a fenced dog park of 1.25 acres inside Fremont Park with its own 0.2 mile path, and a pump track at 2261 West 3060 South for bicycles, skates and scooters. Loop distances are published to two decimal places, from 0.08 of a mile at Monterey and Trailside up to 0.59 at the nature park. The largest is Rock Creek Park at 20 acres, out on the plain at 700 South 3850 West, and a regional park was under construction with completion expected in October. One small thing to enjoy: the playground at Centennial Park is spelled Chole's on the parks inventory and Chloe's on the splash pad page, and the city has not settled which.

The last practical note is about noise and rhythm, which is what people actually ask and nobody writes down usefully. This city has three separate patterns and they run on different clocks. Antelope Drive fills and empties with the working day, at 28,000 vehicles a day on the bench side and 18,000 falling to 3,000 on the plain side. The island produces two exceptional days a year, a Saturday in late October and a Friday night in late July, both of which come through on one street. And the maze farm produces six weeks of evening arrivals in the autumn at one junction on 4000 West. Everything else about a specific street, including flight noise from the installation at the far side of the county, is a stand on it question rather than a page question, and the base itself is on the county page.

Three county subjects reach an address in this city, and this companion opens each of them through one page rather than handing over in general. The island beyond the booth belongs to the county and this companion's way in is a road, on the causeway page, which stops at the gate in both directions. The county's walkable water edges, including the pond at the nature park on this corridor, are carried in full with their hours and their rules on the lakeside parks page, and nothing on this companion repeats them. The county's paid and free days out are compared in one place on the family page, and this city's entry in that category is a maze farm the county page does not carry. The canyons and the paved parkway trail are at the other end of the county and there is no bench or canyon inside these city limits at all; the managed wetlands at the bay are on the far side of the causeway; and the installation is a commute. The Davis County hub indexes every one of the seven.

Quick answers


A Syracuse address, answered.

A step in the ground left by the ancient lake, which the city names itself. Syracuse City's history page says the Bluff shoreline was formed and extended roughly north and south across Syracuse, and the same page distinguishes lower Syracuse, where a one room school was built below the Bluff in 1885, from the bench, where meetings moved to a brick school house in 1892 and where the shops and the chapel followed. Bluff Road runs along it and Bluff Ridge Park and Bluff Ridge Elementary take their names from it. Measured on the United States Geological Survey elevation service, it is a slope of ten to fifteen feet per quarter mile rather than a visible edge.

About a hundred and twenty five feet across roughly four miles. On the United States Geological Survey elevation point query service, checked in August 2026, the lowest reading in the city is about 4,225 feet at the maze farm on 4000 West and the highest is about 4,350 feet at a sample point near the northeast corner. A west to east transect at latitude 41.0750 runs about 4,226 feet at longitude 112.100 west, 4,249 at 112.065, 4,267 at 112.055 and 4,300 at 112.040. The civic block on 1700 South reads about 4,285 feet and the nature park on Bluff Road about 4,250.

Not the level people usually mean by that. The Utah Geological Survey gives the Provo shoreline in this county at about 4,810 feet where it was measured crossing Hillfield Road, and the Bonneville level above that; no ground anywhere in Syracuse reaches either, since the highest reading in the city is about 4,350 feet. What the survey does publish in the right range is the Gilbert episode, about 11,600 years ago, at altitudes of roughly 4,250 to 4,255 feet, and Bluff Road at the nature park reads about 4,250 feet. That is an observation about elevation rather than an identification, and this page does not name a shoreline the survey has not named here.

The city runs it and publishes rules rather than suggestions. The 2026 season ran 8 May to 18 September; residents are asked to close their own user valve by 1 April so the system can be pressurised without filling their pipes; two days out of five are recommended in early May and September and three out of five between Memorial Day and Labor Day; no watering between ten in the morning and six at night; none on Sunday; and one assigned dry day per quadrant, split on Antelope Drive and 2000 West, with northwest on Tuesday, northeast Wednesday, southwest Thursday and southeast Friday. Wasting water is prohibited under ordinance 4-25-130 and the city states that usage is monitored.

Eventually, and possibly already. The city cites Utah Code 73-10-34, the bill commonly called HB 242, which requires a secondary water meter on each home's secondary line by 2030, and states that city crews have already started installing them and will continue over the next few years. Whether a particular property has been metered yet is therefore an address level question with a bill attached to it, and it is worth asking before an offer rather than after. The city also states that secondary water is non potable, unfiltered and untreated, carries debris and higher dissolved solids, and should be used only for irrigation.

Seven services on one monthly statement: culinary water, waste removal, park maintenance, secondary water, sewer, storm drain and street lighting. Garbage and green waste are collected weekly by a private company under contract, green waste is a voluntary programme and recycling is bundled into waste collection. From the November 2026 statement, customers still receiving a mailed paper bill are charged a $2.00 monthly fee, which paperless customers are not, and the city's own deadline to switch and avoid it is 1 October 2026. Delinquency leads to culinary water being shut off and accounts going to collections.

7.25 per cent combined, and the city publishes all nine components: state sales and use 4.85, local sales and use 1.00, county option 0.25, county option transportation 0.25, mass transit 0.25, mass transit additional 0.25, transportation infrastructure 0.25, supplemental state 0.05, and recreation, arts and parks 0.10. They sum to exactly 7.25. The city adds that the local sales and use tax is the only sales tax paid directly to Syracuse City, distributed half on point of sale and half on a statewide formula. Franchise taxes are published separately at 6 per cent each for cable, energy utility and telecommunications.

The city, on both counts, which is not true of every town in this corner of the county. The Syracuse Fire Department is an all hazards service covering Syracuse City, unincorporated Davis County and Antelope Island State Park, with 30 full time and 18 part time firefighters plus three battalion chiefs, a fire marshal, a deputy chief and a chief, all licensed as advanced emergency medical technicians or paramedics, on 48 hours on and 96 off. It publishes an Insurance Services Office classification of Class 2, one of 31 in Utah, improved from Class 3. The Syracuse Police Department is at 1751 South 2000 West and dates itself from 1950.

Three locations are published and they do not agree, so this page prints the disagreement rather than a resolution. The 1989 dedication notice put it on the Bluff Road chapel grounds at an address that reads 2500 West Bluff Road. A marker database entry transcribed from a photograph dated 23 September 2018 places it on Bluff Road 0.3 miles north of 2700 South, gives a nearby postal address of 2500 South Bluff Road, and carries a coordinate that geocodes inside Syracuse city at about 4,251 feet. A later secondary account gives 3700 South Bluff Road in northwest Syracuse, which the Census geocoder does not match. Two of the three agree on Bluff Road near 2500 to 2700 South.

Scott Buehler, Moving Utah

A step in the ground, and the half of the city on each side of it.

Syracuse is easy to describe badly, because the things that decide what living here is like do not appear on a listing. Which of four watering quadrants the property sits in, and therefore which day of the week the sprinklers are not allowed to run. Whether the secondary line has been metered yet. Which of two municipal sides or two county sides the parcel is closest to, because two of them are already built against the line and two of them are not going to be. And which half of a hundred and twenty five foot fall the address sits on, because that decides whether you are in the old town or on the edge. Tell me which streets you are weighing and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who can run those checks with you, and stay on the file for the financing side.

Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.