Weekly News (March 9, 2022)

Interest Rate (10th Week)

(By Fairway Home Loan )

   Prime Rate: 3.0% / Ref IR: 0.00- 0.25% 

• 3% Down payment for 1st home buyer is available.
• 5% Down payment 2-4 units FHA program available
• 15% Down payment 2 families -conventional program available.
• Potential home buyer — Have a pre-approval first before the shop.  Now we have 48hour underwriting turn-around times for regular loans.
• Self employed borrower – Need to prepare 3 month business bank statements and the YTD Profit and Loss Statement. YTD income can’t decline more than 30% compared to last year.
• 2022 Conventional loan limit:

Conforming SFR : $647,200.00/ Conforming high balance: $970,800.00

Conforming 2 Family: $828,700/ Conforming High Balance: $1,243,050

Palisades Park Mayor Chung missed the nomination

( Korea Time 3/4 )

• Current Mayor Chung was dropped from Democratic party’s nomination to mayor candidate for the primary election in June. Democratic party nominated Paul Kim instead.
• It is very rare that the current mayor could not be nominated for the next election.
• The Mayor Chung will have to run by himself without the party’s official support.

Tax burden is highest in Palisades Park, NJ

( Korea Time  3/9 )

• According to the recent NJ State census, the ratio of property tax compared to income level, is highest in Palisades Park among other towns in the County: Palisades Park(Average tax:$10,153, Average income:$92,180) is 11% and the second is Fort Lee(Average tax:$11, Average income:$112,135) at 10.2%
• Tenafly (Average tax:$21,966, Average income:$225,838) is 9.7%.
• The lowest town is Edgewater at 7.1%. Average tax is $10,791 and average income is $151,488.
• Demarest has high average income of $239,516 and average tax is $21,983, and tax burden is at 9.1%.

Gov. Murphy unveils plan for big property tax rebates

( NJ.COM 3/7 )

• Phil Murphy announced Thursday his admin will extend property tax relief to about $1.8M NJ households by replacing the state’s Homestead Benefit program.
• Under the new program, NJ homeowners making up to $250,000 would be eligible to receive an average $700 rebate in the first year, and renters making up to $100,000 would be eligible for a rebate up to $250 to help offset the cost of rent increases due to property taxes.
• The Governor stressed this would apply about to 1.15M homeowners and 600,000 renters. Rebates for homeowners would appear as a credit on property tax bills, and payments to renters would be made by check or direct deposit.

( Record 3/9 )

• Phil Murphy plans to spend a record-high $49B to support a broad property tax rebate program and increase funding for schools and health care while keeping his pledge not to raise taxes or NJ Transit fares. The $4.89B budget must be approved by the Democratic-led Legislature, so spending details and the final figure are likely to change by the end of the current fiscal year, which is June 30.

In One Week, The West Cut off Putin’s Economy

( WSJ 3/5 )

• Bit more than two weeks ago, Russia’s companies could sell their goods around the globe and take in investments from over-seas stock-index funds. Its citizens could buy Mac Books and Toyotas at home, and freely spend their rubles abroad.
• Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, another war began to isolate its economy and pressure President Vladimir Putin. The first move was made by Western governments to sanction the country’s banking system. But over the course of the past week, the financial system took over and severed practically every artery of money between Russia and the rest of the world.
• Russia now faces a repeat of one of the most painful episodes in its post-Soviet history – financial crisis of 1998, when its economy collapsed overnight.
• The ruble has lost more than 25% of its value and is now virtually useless outside of Russia, with Western firms refusing to exchange it or process overseas transactions. Moscow’s stock exchange was closed for a fifth straight day on Friday.
• Whether investors will be able to sell the Russian assets they hold is less clear. Norway’s largest pension fund, KLP Group, planned to unload its Russian stocks this week. With the Moscow exchange still closed, it has resorted to selling shares of companies with dual listing in London, said Kiran Aziz, an executive at the $70B fund.

( NYT 3/9)

• After 30 years of operation In Russia, McDonald will cease the operation with 62,000 employees over 800 communities in Russia

The Job Market is Getting Even Tighter

( WSJ 3/5 )

• People are reentering the workforce, but companies could face a severe labor problem by summer. The combination of falling Covid-19 cases and rising opportunities is drawing more people back into the job market. This doesn’t mean it is getting easier for companies to hire.
• The Labor Dept. on Friday said that the economy added 678,000 jobs in Feb – better than the 440,000 economists expected to see. The unemployment rate slipped to 3.8% from January’s 4%. This occurred even as the labor-force participation rate – the share of the working-age population working or seeking work – rose to 62.3% from 62.2%.
• Covid-19 cases have continued to fall, are now at their lowest levels since July nationally and appear likely to keep heading lower. That should make working far less worrisome, while also reducing Covid-19-related classroom closures. In particular, more women in their 20s and early 30s, who have experienced some of the greatest career disruptions as a result of the pandemic, should be able to return to work.
• But even in the case that people come surging back into the labor force, if employment soon returns to the equivalent of pre-pandemic levels, there won’t be much slack. If employment keeps growing like it has, by this summer the job market will be either extraordinarily tight.

Hotels Welcome “Super Commuters”

( NYT 3/9 )

• As the pandemic drags into its third calendar year and remote work shifts to hybrid models, employees who moved to the suburbs or even farther are becoming fixtures at city hotels, where they are establishing comfortable bolt-holes after the commute in for meetings that can’t be taken over Zoom.
• And some hotels eager to tap into this new market while still having yet to recover from the blow of 2020, are crafting nee packages designed specially for them, with amenities like parking, conference rooms and low midweek rates to sweeten the deal.
• Some former city dwellers now facing hours-long commutes have considered renting apartment in their former urban homes. But skyrocketing rent prices – nationally the cost to lease an apartment is up more than 10 percent. And in the cities like Boston and Orlando, they’ve jumped more than 25% — have made regular hotel stays a more affordable option.

Gasoline Prices Hit U.S. High reflecting Impact of Conflict

( WSJ 3/9 )

• The spiraling cost of filling up a tank adds fresh pressure on American households already dealing with the quickest inflation in decades, and could crimp economic growth by curbing spending on other items.
• The national average price for regular gasoline hit $4.173 a gallon, surpassing the previous record of $4.114 reached in July 2008, AAA said early Tuesday. The price was 15% higher than a week earlier and 21% higher than a month earlier.

• Russia is the one of biggest oil producers in the world. As attacks in Ukraine intensified, traders, shippers and financiers shunned Russian oil, removing much of it from the daily global supply.
• Roughly 8% of U.S. crude oil imports and refined products came from Russia last year.

App Backed By Ex-We Work CEO Neumann Makes A Sunbelt Play

( WSJ  3/9 )

• A company that counts We-Work co-fonder Adam Neumann as one of its biggest backers is getting into the property-management business.
• Alfred Club, Inc., which created an app that connects high end apartment renters with services such as personal shoppers and home cleaners, is buying RKW Residential, a Charlotte, NC. property management firm, companies said on Tuesday.
• RKW operates a 30,000-unit portfolio of apartment and single-family homes in fast-growing markets across the Southeast. The amount paid for RKW wasn’t disclosed.
• Neumann acquired a major stake in Alfred in 2020, investing $30M. He added to that recently as part of Alfred’s $125M fundraising round led by real- estate investment company Rialto Capital.

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