Next month you will get an envelope from the government that isn’t your tax refund. Instead, it’s a notice about the 2020 Census which you can fill out and mail or go online to complete. And if you don’t do one of those options a census taker will come a knockin’ on your door to ask you a bunch of questions.  Don’t start looking for the nearest exit-this is a normal thing that happens in this country every 10 years and is mandated by our Constitution and thus required by law for all of us to answer/respond. The Bureau can impose fines for failing to answer or intentionally providing false information.For example?  How many people are living in your home as of April 1, 2020? This is to help the government count the entire U.S. population.  Is this a house, apartment or mobile home and if this home is owned by you is there a mortgage on the home? This information helps produce statistics about homeownership and renting. Ownership has a direct indication of our economic health. In an ideal world, renting stats can help increase/create housing programs. A mortgage is most often public record and the census taker can look up an address to determine who holds the mortgage. What’s your phone number? They may call later to clarify information or ask for more specific information.  The Census Bureau wants to know the name of the person who pays the rent or mortgage and the sex of that person. Why? Again, to create statistics to better understand where different age groups live. One of the contentious questions this year is ‘Is the person paying rent or mortgage of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?’  The Bureau states that they “Want to get answers to this question to help federal agencies monitor compliance with anti-discrimination provisions such as those in the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.” Many folks think that this is an excuse for the government to ferret out illegal aliens and go after them, which is denied by officials constantly. There is a separate question about the person’s race-which can be White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, other Asian, Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Chamorro, other Pacific Islander or ‘some other race’. U.S. census takers get @$15 per hour and they are wanting to hire 5,000 Utahns to head count/knock on doors. The application is on line and they are really hoping to get a lot of temp employees this year who are bilingual who will work in their own towns to go door to doors of those who don’t respond or to track down Native Americans in extremely rural areas. Flexible hours, paid training and weekly paychecks to count heads isn’t a bad job and training starts ASAP.Fill it out, people! Conspiracy theories about the census are rampant but hey, it gets us better federal funding in many areas and could get us more representation in congress!To find out more about what’s coming in the mail or to apply: go to www.2020census.gov

God forbid you might be an employer right now, trying to hire worker bees who might actually show up to an interview, better…get hired and stay for a while. Can we say that Salt Lake City is in a crisis mode and we’re teetering on a really big problem this next decade? Examples I’ve heard of recently: 1) a company here just opening at a local mall needs 160 employees. They’ve been able to recruit 60; 2) landscapers are paying illegals $15 an hour for manual labor. That’s the going rate for those folks hanging around the entrances to the parking lots of Home Depot. Friend of mine tells me he can’t hire any of them for less than that amount; 3) restauranteur buddy puts ads out, gets no calls. Offering starting wages in the kitchen $12.50-$15 per hour; 4) a manager at UPS tells me he hired one worker who after two days of delivering boxes and packages walked off the job and left the keys in the brown van, with the motor running; 5) a small business owner I know says that when they do place and ad, hires a new employee, that employee doesn’t show up ever again and won’t return calls; and finally 6) another friend tells me that restaurant managers are cannibalizing their neighbors restaurants and offering competitors employees “$1.00-$2.00 more an hour if you come and work for us!”. If you can’t find people to work for you, then you might have to do their jobs, right? So many of my friends who own small businesses are tearing out their hair doing their management jobs and the work of their employees-some doing 15 hours a day.  There’s no quality of life when you’re working that many hours. And if you’re over worked, you’re not going out to restaurants, enjoying movies and local entertainment, buying new cars or houses. YOU HAVE NO TIME. This is scary. And to back that up the U.S. Chamber of Commerce just validated in their recent job report is that Utah has only two workers for every three jobs. Do you wonder why Governor Gary Herbert wrote Donald Trump and simply said, “Send UTAH your refugees!”  The U.S.C.C. reported that as of June 2019 there were 81,333 available jobs per month with only 57,071 workers to fill those jobs. The state’s ‘Worker Availability Ratio’ (available workers per open position) was the 5th lowest in the nation during that period (North Dakota topped the list with the least number of workers per position at 0.51). The report added that Utah’s job market is over 80% tighter that it was a decade ago. The U.S.C.C. says that they are ‘Working to close both the skills gap and the people gap in the American workforce in numerous ways including education and talent development programs, immigration and labor policy research and advocacy. Homeland Security reported that 1,096,611 people obtained lawful permanent resident stats in 2018 for the entire country. If we divvied up those people to fifty states that’s @22,000 per state. That would still be half of what we need.

City folk bitch and moan about the high price of housing in Zion all the time. Face it, kids, we’ve been discovered by the tech world and supporting industries and people are moving here in droves. When there’s high demand, there’s high prices for both rentals and purchases.  You think YOU have it bad?  I’m a native New Yorker and I pay attention to my birth state, so check out sales there in 2019: The top ten sales in the Big Apple last year were in a new high rise called 220 Central Park South. Hedge fund manager/billionaire Kenneth Griffin bought four floors there for a cool $240 million. That figure is the highest purchase price in the entire country for a condo! The highest sale of a condo reported to an MLS in Utah was for $7,525,000 as listed by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Utah. That was after they had dropped the price from $8,050,000.  Another fund manager bought one at ‘220’ for almost $93 million and Sting himself picked up one for $65.75 million. Salt Lake City and New York City saw a weird housing market last year. Yes, prices went up, but some went down and many sellers who thought they were going to take advantage of a seller’s market found that they weren’t going to cash out for as much as they had hoped. One condo building in downtown SLC where I sell a lot of units NEVER has anything for sale, and yet at the beginning of December there were six on the market. When my sellers got an offer for slightly less than asking price I asked, ‘Do you want to be one of the six for sale or do you want to be one of the six that SOLD?’.  We’re closing escrow momentarily on that unit.  Homes and condos sat on the market a little longer in both cities. City Creek, across from Temple Square announced in November that they were virtually sold out of all condos and didn’t plan on building any more high end units here. In NYC high end units were having a hard time selling because the construction boom there has been enormous in the past few years and high end inventory abounds. The high end residential tower at 15 Hudson Yards that opened in 2016 has only sold out a little more than half of their inventory and a new building is going in next door with even more luxury condos being offered for future buyers and investors. According to one data mining company (marketproof.com), at least a quarter of New York condos built after 2013 were still unsold in the early fall of last year. In Salt Lake City, only 12 condos built after 2013 were for sale as of last week. What’s the prediction for 2020?  I’ve got no great answers for you, as politics may rule the year. Mortgage rates don’t typically change drastically during these years and well, interest rates are low and should remain under 5% in 2020. Inventory isn’t being built fast enough to meet demand and prices will still go up, while some will go down! www.cityrealty.comwww.marketproof.com 

Did you know that one out of every six Utahns moved last year?  Although were about to embark on a new 2020 national census we still get drips and drabs of information from the U.S. Census Bureau of current data that is rather surprising. The good news is that more people are moving into Utah than leaving the state. If folks were running away from here property values would drop and inventory would increase.

Most people moving here are coming from California. Why? Easy answers…California has high housing prices, has one of the nations highest state income tax rate for citizens living there, and traffic is horrific. Relocating adults are then coming from Idaho, Washington state, Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Colorado, and New York. Several of those states also have bad traffic, taxes or income taxes as well.  What those states don’t have is our snow and ski resorts, our ‘Big Six’ national parks and a very healthy but conservative state economy.

According to topmoving.com, the average cost of hiring a professional moving company to get someone from San Francisco to Utah is $2848 and if you rent a 10’ truck from U-Haul to get your stuff from Salt Lake to San Francisco you’d pay $469 for four days of use and 871 miles. By the way, I don’t recommend that website-because once I put in my basic info (required) I received 10 phone calls and 10 emails within 10 minutes of movers trying to sell me their services.  That is IF you can find a parking place in the Bay Area to unload your treasures!  Hell, I have a friend who rents a one bedroom there just outside of the Castro District for $3500 per month in an old home. He has a handicapped plate and no off street parking. There are somedays he has to drive around for an hour in his neighborhood just to find parking. And then, if he doesn’t move the car on certain days or hours, he gets towed. And he gets towed at least once a month because he forgot about the restriction or didn’t get to the car in time.

Whether you’ve moving in or out of state there are some basic hacks from moving.com that will help you get off on the right foot:  call utility companies to start or stop service; set your budget for a mover or truck and get bids; get packing supplies; leave your clothes on hangers and get a clothing box for them with a hanging bar; wrap up breakables in your linens and towels; fill up your pots and pans with small items from your kitchen (like spices and food) but also put plastic wrap over those pots in case things spill; same with your suitcases-use them!  Also, if you have to hire movers be aware that you’re going to be charged by weight. Is your old washer/dryer or refrigerator worth paying for to get across country or would it be better to purchase new ones that would fit in your new place?

https://www.jthomashomes.com/blog/9-reasons-people-move-to-utah/

https://www.uhaul.com/Reservations/RatesTrucks/