Thursday, February 12, 2015

Nusenda Doesn’t Send(a) Me

Effective Monday (2/9) or Tuesday (2/10), Nusenda is the new name for New Mexico Educators Federal Credit Union. NMEFCU has been my “bank” for 18 years. A long time ago I went through a financial institution name change. It was mostly done right.
What the hell is Nusenda? The Albuquerque Journal story this morning said the credit union used a consultant. Probably it was the same guy who invented Bank 34 in Alamogordo.
My name change experience was the move of Albuquerque National Bank and ten others (I think it was ten) into being Sunwest Bank. As an ANB / Sunwest employee, I handled the public relations on the name change. Pre-internet, the logistics of getting the information around the state were complex. But we got it done.
While “sunwest” really doesn’t mean anything, it sounds like it does. These are words people know. Nusenda is, well, nusenda.
The Sunwest change took effect on a Monday. It was announced over the weekend by what was then the state’s largest single advertising campaign. By Monday morning customer consciousness of Albuquerque National Bank of obliterated.
Nusenda just appeared. We first heard of it when my wife drove by the Uptown office on Tuesday (2/10). That may hav been the effective day. Why a day in the middle of the week? There may have been an email, but it went to our spam file. We have seen no advertising. Today’s Journal story reported the change and had people making fun of the change. Translated, NMEFCU let others control the story. That’s just stupid.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

January Real Estate Follows 2014 Pattern

For the metro Albuquerque real estate market, 2015 has started just like 2014.
The 537 sales of single family homes closed during January were down 119 units, or 18%, from December and essentially the same as the 539 sales closed during January 2014. The 855 homes with a sale pending during January jumped a resounding 32% from December. The January 2014 number of pending sales—769—was up 137 from December 2013.
The difference between the two years suggests a brighter future for 2015 as compared to 2014. That’s because those 855 sales pending during January 2015 showed an 86-unit, or 11.2%, increase from a year ago. Given that closed sales in one month have a rough relationship to sales pending during the previous month, the sales closed this month may well do better than the 550 sales closed during February 2014 which was an 11-unit increase from January.
The January closed sales took a while. They were on the market for an average of days 81 days, ten days more than December and the second longest sales period of the past two years, behind only the 83-day average of February 2014.
During January the median sales price was $169,500 and the average price was $203,468. The January prices were essentially the same as January 2013 and down about four percent from December.
The Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors released the January sales report yesterday.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Another Reason For Skipping School Elections: Distance to the Polls

To the list of rational reasons for not voting in school board elections, add distance to the polling place. After consulting its collective wisdom, the Chaves County Commission put the one polling place for the Hagerman school district in Roswell. That’s 26 miles away. Hagerman is south and a bit east of Roswell on N.M. 2. The three board candidates were unopposed, so not even the candidates voted. No one else voted either.
The distance problem hadn’t occurred to me. But then my near-UNM polling place is a three-minute drive from my house.
The Hagerman powers-that-be have figured a work-around. The existing board will appoint the three candidates to the vacant positions.
The Albuquerque Journal has noticed the Hagerman situation along with the miniscule turnout in Albuquerque and called for changing the time of school elections. Duh.