Off the News: They’re now on Daylight Savings Time

It’s Monday. Do you know where your clocks’ hour hands are set?

Actually, they should have stayed put over the weekend, but at 2 a.m. Sunday, most mainland states turned them an hour ahead to “daylight savings time.”

Hawaii and all parts of Arizona except the Navajo Nation stick with standard time year-round, deciding that they have quite enough daylight, thanks very much.

Even so, we must adjust our planning: It’s now six hours later on the East Coast, three hours later on the West Coast.

Better get those business phone calls in.

Low rates, but high home prices

In recent weeks, as the reach of COVID-19 widened, more investors shifted money out of the stock market and into the safety of U.S. treasuries. The upshot Friday was that U.S. mortgage rates dropped. The new 3.29% average rate — the lowest for a 30-year fixed mortgage since Freddie Mac started tracking rates in 1971 — gives homeowners a tempting opportunity to refinance loans to free up money.

Meanwhile, according to Honolulu Board of Realtors’ latest figures, last month’s median sale price for a single-family home on Oahu was $765,000, and slightly more than half of all single-family home sales were in the $600,000 to $899,000 range.