Welcome to the 577^th Weekly Update on this fine Friday afternoon. If you end up with any damage or issues from Hurricane Isaias, please reach out. When there is storm damage in neighborhood, it’s even MORE IMPORTANT to connect with honest folks and we have the connections to help. Whether you need help with removing a tree that fell, a trusted roofer, a handyman project, just give us a call so you don’t find yourself with a not funny painful situation.



Now, back to the update. This week, rates bounced around and were slightly improved and we're hoping for CONTINUED improvement in the coming weeks. The rates are shown just above the trivia question. If you have questions about how these rates apply to your situation, let's talk. But gang as usual, there is LOTS GOING ON, SO LET'S GET STARTED!

CRAZY STORIES

Couple of SPOOKY stories for our Crazy story section as we hit the halfway point in October.

There were a few times that my folks asked me to turn down the radio in my bedroom. That little radio could CRANK out 80s and 90s classics from the tape deck, especially classics like Guns ‘n Roses’ Appetite for Destruction or Van Halen’s Jump off their 1984 album. Scientists may be doing the OPPOSITE and asking a distant neighbor to turn it UP so they can study it more.

Researchers from Harvard and the University of Oregon say they picked up radio signals straight from a planet outside our solar system. Which is truly a first! The planet is called beta Pictoris b, a giant ball of gas that weighs more than ELEVEN Jupiters, which is A LOT of Jupiters. It sits 64 light-years away, and a telescope in South Africa caught the signal.


Before you ask, scientists are CLAIMING that it is NOT aliens calling. The signals appear to come from natural light shows that are similar to our Northern Lights and are caused by charged particles moving along the planet’s magnetic field. They also showed its magnetic field is over 300 times stronger than Jupiter’s. The study still needs peer review, but the neighbor’s noise complaint is currently falling on deaf ears. Click below to read more!

Now for a food product that MAY not be in the salad dressing aisle much longer. Hidden Valley just launched the so called, ‘Spooky Ranch.’ Gang this is a jet-black version of its famous ranch dressing and its first-ever seasonal product. The color comes from fruit juice and cocoa powder, with no artificial flavors, and the company says the taste is still classic ranch.

The 12-ounce bottle glows in the dark! To be clear, the ranch does not glow, just the bottle. Hidden Valley suggests dunking Halloween snacks in it or drizzling it over pizza. Past Halloween promos included a life-size ranch bottle costume, but this time the dressing itself got the makeover.

Not everyone is sold, including some of our editors who, without tasting it, think it may be a crime against nature and humanity. And some online reviews and reactions of the product have been LESS THAN enthusiastic. Others are comparing it to the colorful Heinz ketchups from the Shrek days.


If you’re feeling brave, you can find it only at Walmart for $17, which sounds a bit HIGH for salad dressing. But hurry up because it’s a limited edition, sold during the Halloween season. So go grab a bottle before it vanishes like a ghost in the night! Click below to read more or click here to order it yourself.

If you thought that was amazing or showed phenomenal FEETS of strength (dad joke), you ain’t seen nothing yet. This next guy MAY have missed curfew.

Karl Busby may have the longest curfew violation in history. He left Punta Arenas, Chile on November 1^st, 1998, with about $500, a customized golf trolley he calls the Beast, and a big plan: walk all the way home to Hull, England. He figured it would take 12 years. It took 28, thanks to wars, visa bans, a pandemic, and money troubles.

Along the way he crossed the frozen Bering Strait on foot, met a polar bear face to face, and swam the Caspian Sea over 31 days.

Back home his mother was waiting on his return… patiently-ISH. He took twenty-eight years to make it home. Most recently, he swam floated across the English Channel in a wetsuit and fins. He jokes it is not real swimming, so he calls it “floatimming.” Now he is in Dover with a MERE 250 miles to go. His goal is to arrive in Hull on November 1, exactly 28 years after he left. 

His mom Angela has been waiting, and she has her greeting ready: “What time do you call this, Karl?” The plot twist? Turns out he does not even like walking! Which after 28 years, we can’t blame him! Click below to read more. 

REAL ESTATE TO BEHOLD



In honor of the Wake vs. Cal game tomorrow (GO DEACS!), let’s head to the West Coast and land in Point Dume, one of Malibu’s most exclusive neighborhoods, where “Peacock Alley” just hit the market for $16.85 million. It is named for the wild peacocks that stroll the neighborhood, and the home has the feathers to match, seriously. Its powder room is lined with 3,500 peacock feathers, which is A BIT more than the powder room here at the Weekly Update’s World HQ.


The 4-bedroom, 6-bath home sits on about 2/3rds of an acre and includes a guest house. Outside, you will find a 55-foot swimming pool, an outdoor kitchen and bar, and an outdoor TV so you can watch movies while floating in the spa. Inside, there is a demonstration kitchen that seats 16, a screening room with cashmere walls, and a meditation garden with an infrared sauna. The best part? The home comes with keys to the private Riviera II Beach, known for great surfing. HANG TEN GANG!

Our editors wanted to include this one down on the Gulf Coast, which admittedly is a BIT of a fixer upper.

Welcome to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, home of a Taj Mahal-inspired estate that has been in the works for 13 years and is not quite finished (thank God they didn’t take inspiration from Sagrada Familia… we’d be waiting MUCH longer.) Picture a 5 bedroom, 4,402-square-foot residence on nearly an acre with 126 feet of waterfront and big arched windows. Inside, you will find concrete floors, framed walls, and an exposed metal ceiling, so bring your FULL imagination, AND a contractor!

The home first hit the market in 2016 for $2 million. It’s back, now priced at $2.5 million, still waiting for a buyer to finish what was started. One estimate says it would cost $800,000 to $1.2 million to redo the interior and clean up the outside, putting the Price is Right Showcase Showdown total between $3.3 million and $3.7 million. Gang, if this fixer-upper has you looking around YOUR house and thinking about changes, be sure to ask us about our renovation financing OR just click below.

 Let’s head to the Pacific Northwest, where rain is famous but piazzas are not. Friends told Dwayne and Terese Clark, “No one has piazzas in Seattle.” They built one anyway, inspired by their love of Italy, and Dwayne says it has its own microclimate a few degrees warmer than outside!


Now their 2.3-acre compound in Hunt’s Point, Washington, is listed for $71 million, which would set a Pacific Northwest record if it sold close to that. Last year, Jeff Bezos sold his Hunt’s Point mansion for $63 million. The property has two docks on Lake Washington and two Mediterranean-style homes connected by a bridge over a koi pond. The newer home, finished in 2024, feels like the island of Capri and includes indoor and outdoor pools AND the garage turns into a ballroom if you need that sort of thing. The Clarks say they put $50 million into the property over nearly 20 years, aiming to build their own private resort. Now they’re heading to sunny Arizona. If this one is too much…they also have a Santa Barbara beachfront home listed for about $45 million, coming to a future weekly update near you. Click below to see more.

THE ECONOMY AND REAL ESTATE

The midweek inflation report was NOT the party favor we hoped for. Prices rose 0.6% from August to September, faster than the 0.4% jump the month before. Compared with a year ago, prices are up 3.7%, climbing from 3.4% last month.


Here’s the part economists really noticed. When you take out food and energy, which swing around a lot, prices still rose faster than expectations, both for the month and the year. Service costs, things like rent and healthcare, were strong too. That tells us price pressure is spreading, not just sitting in one corner of the economy.


Why should you care? The Federal Reserve watches this report closely when deciding what to do with interest rates. Right now, talk centers on a possible rate hike. If next month’s report looks like this one, and let’s hope it doesn’t, that talk could turn into several hikes in a row.


The good news is one report is just one snapshot. The next one arrives November 10, and we’ll be watching.

Here’s a plot twist: even with mortgage rates climbing, buyers are still getting to the closing table. Existing home sales rose 1.5% in September to a pace of 3.99 million homes a year, beating what experts expected. The median price hit $417,500, the highest ever for the month of September.


August and September were still the two slowest months for sales this year, and the average 30-year mortgage rate hit 7.40% last week, the highest since November 2023. That means fewer buyers can qualify for a loan.


Here’s the silver lining. Inventory climbed to 1.6 million homes, the most since 2019, and homes are sitting a median of 33 days before selling. NAR’s chief economist says that it gives buyers more negotiating power. A calmer market can mean fewer bidding wars and more time to compare homes, run the numbers, and make a thoughtful decision instead of racing into one. First-time buyers made up 31% of sales, too. Sellers, take note: pricing realistically matters!

Mark Twain was famously quoted as saying, reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated… Gang, the same is true about the housing market and rates – which are still moving along with some surprising stats from the folks at KCM below about just HOW MANY houses sell every day and the pace for the whole year. Keep reading the summary below. 

Gang, Homes Are Still Selling – Even in a Slower Market

If you’ve seen headlines saying home sales are slowing down, you may be wondering: is this really a good time to sell?

While the latest numbers show sales picked up slightly in September, they're still down compared to last year. But here’s the perspective the headlines can miss.


Homes are still selling every single day. 
Because no matter what’s happening with mortgage rates or the economy, life keeps happening too. People get new jobs. Families grow. Relationships change. People retire, downsize, or need to move closer to the people they love. And those life changes create buyers and sellers in every market.


Just Look at the Math

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), based on the current pace homeowners are expected to sell almost 4 million homes this year. Break that down, and that’s roughly:

·      334,000 homes every month

·      77,200 homes every week

·      11,000 homes each and every day.

·      450 homes every hour.

·      8 homes every minute.

So, yes, the market may be moving at a slower pace than it has at other points in time. But slower doesn't mean it’s stopped. As Hannah Jones, Senior Economic Research Analyst at Realtor.com, says:

“Even in today's high-price, high-rate market, homebuying activity around major life events, such as having kids, a job change, or a divorce, keeps the market in motion.”

Thousands of buyers are still making moves every day. The key is making sure your house is positioned to get their attention.

What That Means for Your Sale

Today’s buyers have more choices, so they can afford to be more selective about things like price and condition. That makes having the right strategy from the start especially important.

Because you don't need every buyer to be looking for a home like yours. You just need the right one – and to know how to get in front of that buyer.

Bottom Line

Don't let a headline about slowing home sales convince you no one is buying. Homes are still selling every minute of every day.

If you need or want to move, let's talk about what it'll take to make sure yours is one of them.

Let's connect and talk about it. 

RATES:

Pricing and rates remain erratic and volatile. Confirm rates & pricing directly with your loan officer.

Check out the trivia below and remember, there is a drawing to enter to win a gift card. This is your chance to enter for a chance to win the gift card awarded every other month. This trivia question is for the September & October drawing/card.

TRIVIA QUESTION

Our chief editor is a HUGE fan of the Acquired podcast, and they recently released their DISNEY episode. Disney has a RICH history, from Walt Disney's early days to helping Steve Jobs become a BILLIONAIRE! (That's right, it wasn't Apple but hist stake in PIXAR when it IPO’d in 1995 that first made Jobs a billionaire!) But not every Disney executive batted a thousand.



Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner famously predicted that one Pixar movie would be a FLOP. In fact, he reportedly thought its failure might give Disney the upper hand in negotiations with Pixar. Instead, the movie became a MASSIVE hit, earning nearly $900 MILLION worldwide. Which movie did Eisner think would be a FAILURE?

A)    Toy Story

B)    Monsters, Inc.

C)    Finding Nemo

D)   The Incredibles

E)    A Bug's Life


Click here to EMAIL ME YOUR ANSWER.

**Email your answer to me to have your name entered in a drawing for a gift card at the beginning of even months and YES you can go back and answer previous weeks’ questions if you have not answered them already AND if we have not unveiled the answer yet***