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Top States for Retirement

Top States for Retirement

The housing market has many phases from the eager first time homebuyer to upgrading due to a larger family, then downgrading for empty nesters and finally, your last home purchase - retirement.  But where will that last purchase be?

AARP and Wallet Hub has published a list of the Top Ten Places to retire and here is what they found:

From cost of living to climate and health care, many factors go into deciding where to retire. WalletHub is out with a new list of best states for older Americans. The personal finance website looked into 41 key indicators of retirement-friendliness and ranked each of the 50 states.

Topping the list for best overall is Florida. While it ranked No. 1 in affordability and high in other areas, WalletHub ranked it 20th for health care.

There’s a new state in the No. 2 spot this year, Colorado. While it wasn’t in the top 20 for affordability, it ranked No. 2 for health care.

Rounding out the top 10:
3. South Dakota
4. Iowa
5. Virginia
6. Wyoming
7. New Hampshire
8. Idaho
9. Utah
10. Arizona

Breaking down the states into specific areas, Alaska had the highest percentage of people age 65 and older still in the workforce — followed by Vermont, South Dakota, Nebraska and North Dakota. Alaska also had the lowest percentage of residents over 65 of the 50 states. As for the highest percent of the population 65 and older: Florida, Maine, West Virginia, Vermont, Montana and Pennsylvania.

What Happened to Rates Last Week?

Mortgage backed securities (FNMA 4.50 MBS) gained just +9 basis points (BPS) from last Friday's close which caused fixed mortgage rates to move sideways for the week.  That's the good news.  The bad news?  For the month of September, MBS lost -68 BPS which pushed fixed conventional mortgage rats to their highest levels in seven years.

Overview:  We had a big week for economic data with big-hitting reports like GDP,  PCE and Chicago PMI -  all showing solid growth.  The Federal Reserve raised their key Fed Fund rate and reaffirmed that they will continue to raise rates on a gradual path until they get to a "neutral rate" (the theoretical rate where inflation and interest rates are balanced).

The Talking Fed: You can read the official FOMC statement Here
You can read their Economic Projections here.
Here is an overview of their statement:
- Raised they key Fed Funds Rate from 2.00% to 2.25%
- Only meaningful change in FOMC's statement is removal of the sentence on maintaining "accommodative'' policy.
- The overview of the economy is basically the same as their August statement: labor market continues to strengthen, activity "strong.'
- Fed sees 2018 GDP growth at 3.1%, a noticeable upgrade from the 2.8% it saw in June, without any expected breakout in inflation.
- GDP growth of 2.5% in 2019, up from from 2.4%, suggesting the base case is that trade disputes and tariffs do not detract from growth much at all.
- The "dot plot" chart was relatively the same as June's projections:

  • 2018 2.375% (range 2.125% to 2.375%); prior 2.375%
  • 2019 3.125% (range 2.125% to 3.625%); prior 3.125%
  • 2020 3.375% (range 2.125% to 3.875%); prior 3.375%
  • 2021 3.375% (range 2.125% to 4.125%)

Inflation Nation: Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), the Fed's key measure of inflation matched market expectations with the Core PCE YOY remaining at 2.0%. The Headline PCE YOY matched expectations at 2.2% but moved a tad lower from July's pace of 2.3%. Personal Income remained at July's 0.3% pace and Personal Spending matched expectations at 0.3% but were just off July's pace of 0.4%.

Manufacturing: The September Chicago PMI data was very robust even though it was lighter than expectations (60.4 vs est of 62.5). Any reading above 50 is expansionary for this bell-weather manufacturing index and a reading above 60 is very strong.

Consumer Sentiment: The final read for the September data set hit 100.1 vs the preliminary release of 100.8. Any reading above 100 is extremely strong, this is the second highest reading of the year.

GDP: We got the third look at the 2nd QTR GDP and it remained at 4.2%. But the Product Price Index was revised higher and beat out estimates (3.3% vs est of 3.0%).

What to Watch Out For This Week:


The above are the major economic reports that will hit the market this week. They each have the ability to affect the pricing of Mortgage Backed Securities and therefore, interest rates for Government and Conventional mortgages. I will be watching these reports closely for you and let you know if there are any big surprises.

It is virtually impossible for you to keep track of what is going on with the economy and other events that can impact the housing and mortgage markets.  Just leave it to me, I monitor the live trading of Mortgage Backed Securities which are the only thing government and conventional mortgage rates are based upon.

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Gold Canyon Mortgage Blog