This April’s National New Homes Month arrives with some welcome news for homebuyers as well as all Baldy View region residents.

Probably at no point in our recent history have worldwide events focused light on the importance of our homes to our lives, futures and economy. ‘Sheltering in place’ and ‘social distancing’ would be exercises in futility without our homes.

Back in the days before personal computers, financial professionals were fond of the term ‘pencil’ to indicate whether columns of figures totaled out correctly. To say ‘it pencils’ means ‘it works. For new homebuyers, a great deal of information is required …

The first choice most homebuyers make when deciding to shop for a new home is whether to purchase a state-of-the-art new home or an existing home – and both of those choices come with their own advantages.

Spring started with good news for home buyers and sellers when the Bankrate.com National Survey of Mortgage Lenders reported that mortgage rates were falling for 30-Year Fixed-Rate mortgages (FMR) and reported “signs point to more downward action”.  The website reported that the 10-year Treasury Note “slipped to 1.080 percent, creating yet another historic low for yields. The 10-year Treasury and mortgage rates typically move in the same direction, so where the 10-year goes, mortgage rates usually aren’t far behind”.

A theme you will see repeated often in real estate columns is: for most Americans, their home will be the biggest and best investment they will make in their lifetimes.  Factor in all the tax and credit benefits and you will see how homeownership offers opportunities presented by few other investments. However, since few investments offer the enjoyment and excitement of actually shopping for a new home, it is important for home buyers to stay focused on the importance of approaching their purchase as a major investment. 

In 1974, a pop song swept the nation containing the lyrics “dreams can come true again, when everything old is new again”. If you remember hearing this song on the radio, you are one of a generation of Americans who are living longer, more active and healthier lives and planning for retirement. Today those planning for their golden years have far more housing options while enjoying greater convenience and comfort than previous generations thanks to new remodeling innovations known as ‘aging-in-place’ – innovations that can make older homes new again.

While all of the old ranchos and ranches in the Baldy View region featured orchards and vineyards; cattle ranching was our region’s key industry until citrus growers harnessed the waters of the Santa Ana River and vintner Secundo Guasti realized that an underground water table could nourish huge tracts of vineyards without surface irrigation.

Last week, the legendary Groundhog Day groundhog Punxsutawney Phil failed to see his shadow and ‘predicted’ an early spring for 2020. For those of us who are fortunate enough to live in Southern California, an early spring isn’t big news as it might be in other states – but it is always good news for homeowners and home shoppers. This is because for homeowners looking to prepare  or ‘stage’ their homes for sale as the home shopping season begins, these next few weeks offer a terrific opportunity to get a head start on a number of details that will benefit the sale and enhance the value of the home considerably.

Take a walk through the state-of-the-art models in any new home community here in the Baldy View region and you will experience how today’s homes are built to address today’s – and tomorrow’s - buyer’s needs, concerns and preferences.

These designs continue to be state-of-the-art thanks to events like the January National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) 2020 International Builders’ Show (IBS) which - combined with the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show for the annual Design & Construction Week - drew a total of approximately 90,000 home building professionals.

‘Wintering’ was a popular term among east coast and midwestern Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It described moving to Southern California for a few months to bask in our mild winters while less fortunate neighbors braced against far sterner winter weather back home. And today, our mild winters account for one of the key reasons our region is one of the most desired destination for homebuyers and businesses in the nation.

Today, older homeowners remember long lines of cars snaking around the local post offices on every April 15, as a relic of a pre-digital world. While a multitude of tax programs and services have considerably diminished this tax day headache, these offer a new palette of tax season opportunities and challenges for homeowners.

According to the recently released Characteristics of Recent Home Buyers Special Studies authored by Carmel Ford of the Economics and Housing Policy arm of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the key reason most new homebuyers gave for their decision to purchase a new home was because they desired better homes and better neighborhoods.

For home buyers hoping to make 2020 the year they attain the American Dream of Homeownership, the end of the holiday season usually signals the beginning of the home buying season.  So, if your next project after putting away all the holiday decorations is to start shopping for your new home, here are some long-range planning tips that will make your home buying experience as rewarding and stress-free as possible.

In previous columns I have noted that the holiday season offers a great opportunity for home shoppers to ask parents, family members and friends to give gifts of cash to help build their downpayment fund.

However, for new and current homeowners, or for those who are hoping to make 2020 the year they realize their American Dream of homeownership, the holiday season provides a great opportunity to stock up on the essentials homeowners need to maintain and protect what will be for most Americans the biggest and best investment they will ever make.

The good news for today’s homebuyers is that recently new rules have been introduced to simplify the mortgage loan application process to make it easier for consumers to understand the process by clearly spelling out the most relevant details such as the interest rate, amount of monthly payments and a listing of all the settlement (known as closing) costs.

‘Closing’ is the commonly-used term to describe the Settlement Process which is the final phase of purchasing a home where ownership of a property passes from seller to purchaser and involves a great deal of education for buyer. Because it is one of the most important phases of purchasing a new home, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) offers an invaluable resource to help navigate this process with www.consumerfinance.gov/know-before-you-owe on the web.

Thanksgiving is traditionally the gateway to the holiday season and many of our neighbors will begin their holiday season by festooning their homes with holiday lights and decorations in springlike weather while many others across America will be bracing for the first blasts of winter. However, here in San Bernardino County, we will be enjoying a far milder winter – one that prompted wealthy Americans in America’s heartland and eastern seaboard in the 19th and early 20th centuries to escape the harsh weather by ’wintering’ in our mild Mediterranean climate.

To most Southern Californians, saving money during the winter months means shopping for the best holiday bargains. However, for homeowners, the beginning of the holiday season offers a terrific opportunity to rein in costs by making some environmentally friendly changes that scale down domestic water use.

     For 2020, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasts a winter relatively free of the conditions brought by El Niño (a warming of the ocean surface, or above-average sea surface temperatures) or La Niña (a cooling of the ocean surface, or below-average sea surface temperatures) with no immediate return to drought conditions. In short, we should be able to look to a relatively normal winter weather-wise.

For most home shoppers, the holiday season is the time when all the planning for a new home goes on the back burner until after the New Year. However, for those who will be looking at 2020 as the year in which they make their American Dream of homeownership a reality, the holiday season offers a great opportunity to circumvent the usual holiday season challenges and bring homebuyers one step closer to their new home.

Daylight Savings is over and while much of America is digging out their sleds and snow shovels, Southern Californians are still checking the weather reports to determine if they need to put on jackets before they leave the house.