Physical Address/Banking/Nomadic

[LaurenLuna]

I'm teleworking, soon to retire and nomadic. I gave up my lease and have been using AirBnBs for lodging until permanent retirement, a few months away. At that time, I will be leaving this area.

My mail is handled by a forwarding service (but almost all of it is paperless) - the address I pay them for, is a street address.

I have not changed my state of residence. My tax rates are still calculated the same, etc.

That said, I received a request from my bank for a physical address. I don't want to have to lease a room in a house for the next several months, just to get a physical address.

My close friends and family members live in other states, so I would rather not trigger new problems by changing my state.

Am I between a rock and a hard place? My understanding is that mail forwarder address are now being "flagged" as suspicious.

Anyone else been in this spot? If you have any suggestions, much appreciated.

 

[braumeister]

Am I between a rock and a hard place?

I think so.
Banks are required to have a physical address for you. Look up Patriot Act for the details.

You may be able to give them a "home address" (perhaps one of your relatives) while retaining your current mailing address. Some people have used this method successfully. But you probably want to talk with a manager at your bank about it.

 

[brett]

We moved as much as possible to the web.

We used c/o our son for mail which required a street address (same juridiction). Did this for ten months.

Worked out fine. Even better, a lot of the junk mail dropped off.

 

[HillCountry]

I use UPS mail box for my bank accounts and credit cards. Maybe this is okay for business accounts?

 

[LaurenLuna]

Well, maybe Cap One is the only bank that attempts to follow the policy to the strictest letter.

I have other banks and have not heard from any of them.

 

[HillCountry]

My real estate bank account is with cap one. So is one Lowe’s cc.

 

[kgtest]

work at a business bank and yes, we do require a physical address for our customers. not sure if any other banks differ. If you don't have one, we don't lend to you. Pretty simple.


Not to be confused with physically receiving the mail. There are services and PO Box that can accomplish that. But if you want a business loan, the business needs a physical address for underwriting where I work.

 

[kimcdougc]

We are currently using a mail place (like a ups store). You can use their street address like we did since we currently are probably going rving full time. No problem giving it to the bank etc.

 

[Scubamax]

We were outside the USA for over 20 years and then moved back 2 years ago. We rented a UPS store physical address box. Some banking providers did not like that arrangement (including one credit card company), but we were able to manage through most of the issues by giving them a real physical address (which I understand OP does not have). So a sympathetic relative or friend is recommended as a backup plan.

 

[Onward]

As a semi-nomad for many years, often with no true physical residence in the U.S., I've dealt with this issue a lot.

It used to be that a UPS Store (previously Mailboxes Etc) box satisfied everybody: home address, mailing address, physical address--it worked for everything.

That started changing a few years ago, and now it's hard to pass off a UPS Store box as the "physical address" that many companies require. Their databases apparently flag it as a storefront, rather than a residence.

I'm guessing that the same databases flag the inbound addresses of the major mail-forwarding services too?

So the situation is more difficult for nomads now, and I don't have a good solution. You need not only a true residence you can identify as yours, but also (in many cases) a piece of mail from a cable or utility company which is addressed to you at that physical address. Sometimes it has to be dated or postmarked within the last xx days. Your name, along with the address of the residence, on a deed, mortgage statement, or property tax bill usually works too.

I now own a condo in the U.S. It's rented to someone I trust thoroughly, so I use that address whenever a "physical" address is required. Trust me, mail will be sent to your "physical" address, even though you tell the company that all mail should go to your "mailing" address.

In your case I think your best bet is to find someone willing to let you use their home address as your physical address. The person also has to be trustworthy and willing enough to receive mail for you and forward it to you.

 

[zack59]

If its just one bank requesting it why not give them the address of the Airbnb. You are living there right now.

 

[audreyh1]

I'm teleworking, soon to retire and nomadic. I gave up my lease and have been using AirBnBs for lodging until permanent retirement, a few months away. At that time, I will be leaving this area.

My mail is handled by a forwarding service (but almost all of it is paperless) - the address I pay them for, is a street address.

I have not changed my state of residence. My tax rates are still calculated the same, etc.

That said, I received a request from my bank for a physical address. I don't want to have to lease a room in a house for the next several months, just to get a physical address.

My close friends and family members live in other states, so I would rather not trigger new problems by changing my state.

Am I between a rock and a hard place? My understanding is that mail forwarder address are now being "flagged" as suspicious.

Anyone else been in this spot? If you have any suggestions, much appreciated.

The Airbnb you are staying in works for a physical address, and won’t cause problems if in the same state. I wouldn’t worry about updating it more than once a year.

Insurance garaging address might be a problem.

We just used an RV park that we returned to now and then as our physical address. Nothing got mailed there as we had a billing address set up on all accounts, which was our mail service.

 

[Bamaman]

There are many RV parks in Florida, Texas and South Dakota that have secondary businesses as mail drops. Notice two are non state income states.