Moving?
Question of the week: Moving?
Answer: This simple question covers many areas, let’s explore a few.
First, a reiteration of my moving my mortgage career from Stratis Financial to United American Mortgage—hence the new email address for the WR&MU. I am slowly settling in to new software, systems and personnel after 25 years working with my co-owners and others at Stratis.
Second, in our industry “moving” involves relocating your home. Success in our business means families are moving. Many clients over the years have heard me say that the down side of our successfully funding a mortgage for a family to purchase their new home is that they have to move.
Ugh.
Last night at the Rotary Club of Long Beach annual President’s Dinner I was seated next to fellow Rotarian Cheryl and we were trading stories about moving. We quickly agreed that moving stinks. There are other words but we’ll stick with stinks.
Over the years when discussing moving I have relayed to clients the most common process that I have learned from my own experiences; five times before finishing high school encompassing three states and a foreign country, then about eight times between college graduation at 21 and purchasing first home when 31.
Your offer is accepted and you have a timeline to close and move. You buy boxes and commit to going through your “stuff” and separating keep or toss-donate into separate piles, boxes. After a few days of work, kids, etc you stop the process with a few boxes and garbage bags filled for tossing or donating.
The weekend before you need to move your attitude is “pack everything, we’ll sort when we unpack.” The result is boxes in each room of your house with about 20-30% more “stuff” packed than you need.
Everything is moved into your new home. You find the necessary “Kitchen” box in bedroom #2, unpack the box, and follow this triage system for bathrooms, kids’ rooms, your own room.
The first weekend you are in your home you rearrange the furniture, make multiple runs to Target, Home Depot, Ralph’s to get new mops and brooms, sponges, detergent, shower curtains, wastebaskets, new bedding for kids’ rooms as they are more grown up than the theme in prior bedrooms, gardening tools, extension cords, make-shift fencing for yard for your dog, butter, milk, eggs, bread, condiments you tossed instead of moving
Beer and wine.
You spend the first weekend doing all these basics, looking for different items you need in various boxes.
The following week you tell the kids no screens until homework is completed and at least one of their boxes in their rooms are unpacked. After Wednesday this goes by the wayside as they have soccer and ballet and homework. And you are exhausted.
The second weekend between soccer games and ballet recital you start to go through boxes left with the non-essentials, putting items away in the closet or cupboard you decide to use for those items. A toss-or-donate pile starts to grow.
Late Sunday evening you agree to “put the boxes that are left in the garage and we’ll get to them later…”
Some reading the WR&MU have had those “will do later boxes” unopened in their garages from when they moved…six months?…a year?…X years…ago.
Moving stinks.
Here is a process that I recommend, but probably won’t follow when we next move (which I am already dreading even though we have zero plans to move at anytime in the somewhat near or medium future from a home we have been in for 25 years).
If you can, start culling the toss-donate items as soon as you decide you are going to move, especially if you are selling your home and buying. The bigger the task the more we like to put it off, such as “we’ll sort after we move.” Go through one room, closet, cupboard, section of the garage at a time for an hour, possibly two if you getting into the process. As the saying goes, the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.
Keep a notebook, or pad of paper that everyone has access to for putting down important notifications that need to be made once your move is official
For me, the priority is getting a new tag for the dog (or cat) with the new address. Pets don’t understand boxes all over their home, then going to a new place with odd smells, unfamiliar yard. Some will try to find their way back to the old home, or find a way out, start following their nose around the new neighborhood and not no how to get back to you. Go to PetSmart or other pet store and make a tag and put on a new collar as soon as you know your address, put the collar with you essentials bag so it goes on Phideaux as soon as you get to your new home.
Other notifications and changes due to the new address are address in phones, driver’s licenses, kids’ schools, voter registration, social security, health insurance, MediCare if applicable, and every bank, credit card, auto or student loan account, newspapers, magazines, your parents (seeing if you are still reading).
Moving stinks, but the notification part is a lot easier as you can do most of it on-line.
Finally, long time readers of the WR&MU are aware that AI is not used for the preparation, or creation, of the weekly missives—as evidenced by spelling and grammatical errors, awkward and/or missing phrases or words, etc.
Which leads to a tip of the hat to former LBFD Captain Keith who congratulated me on move to Philadelphia. His comment had me proof read, after sending, the bottom section of last week’s WR&MU when I omitted that we moved to Philadelphia area from Oklahoma when I was in grade school; what I wrote reads as Leslie and I have packed up from Long Beach to move closer to our daughters. Not the case!
To schedule an initial meeting by phone or Zoom, click here for my calendar, please feel free to forward to a friend or family member!
Have a question? Ask me!
The not good news is good, for rates. As long-time WR&MU readers know, bad news, even not good news, is good for lower rates. This week we received inflation data that showed the Consumer Price Index in May showed no increase in prices—the first time in two years there has been no change. Year over year prices increased 3.3%, down from the 3.4% increase in May from April. The “core” CPI data (strip out food and energy from data) rose 0.2% from April and 3.5% from last May, down from 3.6%. The 3.5% increase in the core rate is the lowest increase in three years. A 2.8% drop in gas prices was the primary driver of the lower prices. Slowing inflation improves the chances of a rate cut from the Federal Reserve.
Also, positively not good, if that makes sense, was an increase in first-time filers for unemployment claims from last month. The weekly filings totaled 242,000, up from 229,000 last week. When the Fed started to raise rates and aggressively pursue a credit tightening path to lower inflation, it stated it understood the policy may put the economy into recession and raise the unemployment rate to 5% or higher. The increasing weekly claim filings offer evidence higher rates are impacting the labor market and higher unemployment.
Amidst the data was a press conference. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell offered some hope, not a lot but some, that perhaps a shift is occurring within the Fed regarding rates. Last month Powell indicated that the Fed may cut its benchmark rate once this year, or as data dictates, specifically mentioning a weaker labor market. This week Powell said that the Fed is keeping a close eye on the labor market but also inflation, and that if both weakened quickly the Fed would move quickly with a rate cut. As well, Fed officials now see only one rate cut or two was a close call.
Rates for Friday June 14, 2024: As expected with the data from the week, the conforming 30-year rate is lower this week.
FIXED RATE MORTGAGES AT COST OF 1.25 POINTS LOCKED FOR 45 DAYS FOR PURCHASE TRANSACTIONS:
30-year conforming 6.50% Down 0.125%
30-year high-balance conforming 7.125% Flat
Please note that these are base rates and adjustments may be added for condominiums, refinances, credit scores, loan to value, no impound account and period rate is locked. Rates are based on 20% down with 740 FICO score for purchase mortgages.
Father’s Day is different when you have adult children that live on the other side of the country. No ties made out of construction paper with flowers drawn in crayon, or chocolate chip pancakes. But there will be phone calls, which this year will be talking about their coming visit. Father’s Day will be next Sunday when both of our girls will be home for a long visit.
My dad passed away ten years ago, and I have been quoting him frequently over the past week when meeting with clients and people at my new brokerage that I will be working with. My dad taught me several things, one was to treat everyone the same no matter their station in life, how much wealth they have or don’t have, what they look like or who they like.
The other is something he told me when I was a few years out of college and I was visiting him in San Francisco, “I’d rather lose a friend telling the truth than get one by not.” As you can imagine, dad was very honest with everyone. Some appreciated it, some did not. Those who did enjoyed a strong friendship and loyalty.
Through my career that has been my guiding principle. I have lost potential clients over the years telling them that what they wanted to buy was not possible, or fiscally prudent. But more often, much more, I have gained clients that appreciate the honest assessment of their financial abilities, scope of price and mortgages that work for them. My concern is not the day you purchase your home, but two, five, seven…years after you have purchased the home; was it the right decision for how your life has unfolded.
Happy Father’s Day to the dads.
Have a great week,
Dennis
Past Weekly Rate & Market Updates can be found on my blog page at my website www.DennisCSmith.com/my-blog
