VanDyk Mortgage - October 2020

OCTOBER 2020

Letters From the Hart Give us a call! 239-437-4278 Or visit www.TimHartJr.com Corporate NMLS #3035 www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org

TIM’S VOTING TIPS

How to Be a Responsible Voter

We’re just a few short weeks from Election Day. Voting is one of our most important civic duties as United States citizens, and that goes for local elections every two years as well as presidential elections every four years. But with this responsibility to vote also comes the responsibility to make sure we understand who and what we’re voting for. We owe it to ourselves, the candidates, and our fellow citizens. When people step into the voting booth and look at the ballot, they may only recognize about half the names they are reading, and this isn’t uncommon for most people. It’s also not uncommon for most people to assume they have to fill in a vote for every single candidate in order for their ballot to count. But that simply isn’t true. You could vote for just one candidate on the whole ballot and your vote will still count. If you want to cast a vote for everything on your ballot, then it’s your responsibility to make sure you’re educated on the people you’re voting for. There’s no shame in leaving the vote for your county’s new sheriff up to those people who better understand the position and its duties, but if you’d want to participate in that decision, then do the necessary research on the candidates before you step into that booth. Start by obtaining a copy of the ballot early, then spend time conducting your own research on each candidate, making note of how you feel about their political stances and aspirations. Try your best to ignore personal issues dredged up from decades past. I know they can be hard to overlook sometimes, but remember, politics is a game where winners and losers are more often determined by who is personally liked the most rather than whose politics can make the most positive change. Don’t become another pawn in that game. If there are candidates I’m unsure about, my next step is to seek out friends, family, or colleagues who I believe have a better understanding of the person and their situation than I do. Try to avoid only conversing with people who are like-minded — it

pays to be armed with information from all sides so you can gain a truly useful perspective. There’s nothing wrong with gathering opposing information — it’s what you decide to ultimately do with it that makes the difference. I’ve also always been a proponent of voting in person on Election Day. Mail-in voting has become increasingly popular, and those numbers are especially high this year, but I prefer to wait until the very last day and cast my votes in person because I’ve been burned before. I used to vote by mail weeks prior to Election Day, only to have some new piece of information arise from a candidate that I didn’t vote for who is now swaying my opinion. Of course, by then, it’s too late to change my mind. Finally, remember to think about candidates practically. We’ve all heard people sarcastically ask, “ These are the best candidates we can come up with?” Many of us have likely said it ourselves. But try to remember, the life of a politician is no joke. Everything they do and have done in the past is put under a microscope. Facts are twisted, events are blown out of proportion, and reputations are ruined because that’s how the game works. That’s why you should always pay attention to their politics above all else. If you aren’t willing to take time to educate yourself on something the ballot is asking you to vote on, then you shouldn’t vote on it. If you feel like stepping into that booth and casting your presidential vote and nothing else, there’s no shame in that. Voting is a powerful tool that requires a lot of responsibility. Let’s wield it with steady hands.

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2. Taco Bell killed Taco Kid. Before it bought Taco Bell in the 1970s, PepsiCo tried to compete with it. The company launched a restaurant dubbed Taco Kid under its Pizza Hut banner. According to Mental Floss, Taco Bell swiftly stomped out its kid brother. In response, PepsiCo opened its wallet and bought the chain for $130 million. 3. The U.S. government was behind the Quesalupa (sort of). In February 2016, Taco Bell launched the Quesalupa, a taco featuring a shell stuffed with melted pepper jack cheese. It was the chain’s cheesiest offering to date, perhaps because it got a boost from Dairy Management Incorporated, the branch of the United States Department of Agriculture in charge of unloading the country’s 1.4-billion pound cheese surplus . That’s right: The Quesalupa was (kind of) a tasty government conspiracy. This is just the tip of the Taco Bell iceberg. To learn about the chain’s wacky endeavors (including putting a bullseye in the ocean for astronauts and flying 10,000 Doritos Locos Tacos to Alaska by helicopter), visit TacoBell.com/History. 3 MIND-BLOWING FACTS ABOUT TACO BELL The Secret Link Between Home Depot, the Government, and Fast-Food Tacos

Did you know that Oct. 4 is National Taco Day? Corn or flour tortillas, hard or soft shells, we really love our tacos here in the USA. According to NationalTacoDay.com, Americans ate more than 4.5 billion tacos last year. End to end, that’s 490,000 miles of tortilla-wrapped beans, meat, and cheese. By far, the biggest peddler of light-speed tacos in the country is Taco Bell, the fast-food scion of Americanized Mexican cuisine. In 2012, Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco went the food equivalent of viral, selling more than 500 million tacos in just 14 months. It seems like there’s a Taco Bell on every street corner, but how much do you really know about the chain? To celebrate National Taco Day, we’re serving up three Taco Bell facts that will blow your mind. 1. Home Depot helped bring Doritos Locos Tacos to life. After Frito-Lay reached out to Taco Bell to suggest a collaboration, the development team turned to a hardware store for help. To create the famous snack, they “basically went out to Home Depot to buy a paint-spray gun” and blasted a taco with Dorito dust, according to Grub Street.

Blog Your Way Through the Pandemic THE POWER OF WRITING

Everyone has faced trying times over the past few months. While many activities help get us through these challenges, blogging can be one of the most impactful. Writing enables you to express your feelings and experiences, and blogging allows you to share them with others. Here are a few reasons why starting a blog can be an important part of coping with the pandemic. Connect with your readers. At times, it can feel like you are alone in the world, especially now. However, your blog can reach people who feel the same as you or who have had similar experiences as you. Also, writing down your story will inspire other people, and they may even start their own blog. In this way, you not only help yourself and others, but you also spark change in their lives. Meet new people. In addition to encouraging others, you might find a community of like-minded people through sharing your blog. You never know — from new readers and followers, you might learn of support groups to provide additional insights to your

experiences. You can also find empathy and

provide support to others. An online community can help you feel less isolated due to the pandemic or provide support through other challenging aspects of your life.

Express your anxieties. Writing helps people cope with stressful experiences, and the pandemic has ushered a huge amount of uncertainty into their lives. Many people have felt afraid and anxious in the last eight months, and they continue to wonder what the future may hold. Your blog gives you a chance to express those fears and ease your stress. Harvard Medical School studies have shown that writing your thoughts down helps you organize ideas and even regulate emotions. With less on your mind, your body can relax.

Write out your experiences, no matter what situation you find yourself in. You will help other people and especially yourself.

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you with just 5% of your own to put down. You do not need more than 10% down for a vacation home purchase. Myth No. 2: You must own your primary residence before you can own a vacation home. This is also not true. There are no parameters for your primary residence before purchasing a vacation home. Let’s say your primary residence is in the middle of Montana and you rent that home. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from purchasing a vacation home down here in Florida or wherever else you might want. You do not have to own your current primary residence in order to purchase a vacation home. Myth No. 3: The vacation home you purchase must be at least 50 miles away from your primary residence to classify as a vacation home. Now, in most cases, this is actually true, and you do want to make sure your vacation home is at least 50 miles away. But it’s not always true. A great example of this is right here in Lee County in Southwest Florida. This is such a unique area — woods and rivers to the east and beaches and islands to the west, all within 50 miles of each other. So, someone can live in the east but buy a vacation home in the west where they get away for activities they can’t do in the east, like boating. And that’s totally fine. You can buy a vacation home within the same county as long as it

makes sense. If you buy a house three streets over and call it a vacation home because it has a pool, that’s probably not going to work. Myth No. 4: You can only have one vacation home. There’s no truth to this myth, and you can absolutely own more than one vacation home at a time. If your primary residence is in New York but you like to vacation in Florida, you can have a vacation home anywhere you enjoy down here. And if you also like to ski in Colorado in the winter, then you can have your very own condo in Aspen too. And if you’d like to tack on a third vacation home in the desert of Arizona, and a fourth one in the mountains of North Carolina, there’s no reason you can’t. What many people are now doing is purchasing vacation homes for retirement, but several years before they actually retire. They want to get locked in with specific rates and price points, so they buy now, travel back and forth to treat it as a vacation home, and plan on moving into it in a few years when they do finally retire. There’s nothing wrong with that scenario either. If you or someone you know is looking to purchase a vacation home, make sure you’re armed with this information so you’re not kept from purchasing a home you love. If you have any questions or concerns, we’re always here to help give us a call anytime. SUDOKU

surrounding purchasing vacation homes, and it’s become evident that debunking some myths is necessary. First, it’s important to understand the difference between your primary residence and your vacation home: Your primary residence is your main home where you live full time and work full time. Your vacation home, or your second home, is somewhere you go to get away from your primary home for an extended period of time. For people in the Northeast, they may have one down here in southwest Florida, and in winter, they come down to enjoy warmer weather. It goes the other way too — many people from Florida go up to vacation homes in the mountains of Georgia. A vacation home can be many different things, in many different locations. Whether you’re looking to buy a vacation home for the first time or add another one to your address book, it’s important to realize which myths you might think are standing in your way. Myth No. 1: You need to have 20% or even 30% for a down payment on a vacation home. This assumption is not true at all. When it comes to purchasing a vacation home, you only have to have 10% to put toward a down payment before you’re allowed to purchase the home. What’s more is that 5% of that can be a gift from a family member, leaving

Solution on Pg. 4

Trivia Question: What is the minimum down payment on a Vacation Home?

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Be the first to answer the question on Page 3 by emailing [email protected] and win a gift card!

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Inside This Issue Tim Hart, NMLS #354676 8280 College Parkway, Suite #101 Fort Myers, FL 33919

Give us a call! 239-437-4278 Or visit www.TimHartJr.com

Tips for Being a Responsible Voter PAGE 1

3 Mind-Blowing Facts About Taco Bell

Blogging Through the Pandemic PAGE 2 Debunking Vacation Home Myths PAGE 4

Don’t Let False Assumptions Keep You From Your Vacation DEBUNKING VACATION HOME MYTHS

I’ve heard a lot more talk than usual lately about vacation homes. The COVID-19 pandemic is scaring people everywhere, but a lot of people who live in larger cities with dense populations, like Manhattan in New York, various parts of California, Atlanta, and even in comparatively smaller metropolitan areas have heightened fears over the need to get away. These people are looking to leave these areas more than before, but even prior to the pandemic, they were already looking to leave. On top of trying to escape a COVID-19 infection, many people are fearful about the recent rioting and looting in these larger cities and are looking for environments that are safer and can give them more space to spread out. Political elements play a role too. When people

don’t like what’s going on in their city, county, or state, they vote with their feet by getting out.

And many of those people are moving right down here to Florida, primarily because the weather, no state income tax, and the proximity to the beach are desirable. People have always been looking to move to Florida, but what's been happening with our market now in reaction to the pandemic is that people are fast-tracking those moves. Additionally, the fact that people are now able to work remotely makes them realize that they’re not tethered to a specific location for their job, so they’re gearing up to move where they want to live rather than where they have to live. We’re seeing more and more >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4

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