By Matt Joy, Princeton Mortgage Wholesale
Photo by Joshua Peacock on Unsplash
The wall, the dreamers and children’s health care… these are the topics that could potentially cause the next government shutdown. The last time we saw Congress take their ball and leave was during President Obama’s term as President. We saw a shut down in 2011 because of an impasse on raising the federal debt ceiling and then again in 2013 over Obamacare. With another shutdown looming what impact would that have on our industry?
Well, first and foremost, we would see a delay in processing those 4506-T’s… as if we didn’t have enough trouble after the IRS rolled out their new technology… but that’s nothing we can’t handle. I think the biggest impact would be felt at the FHA and processing any new loan applications. Who is going to approve and underwrite those loans if nobody is working? I would expect some delays in turn times across the board… you’ll want to keep an eye on this shutdown and look to extend out your lock periods for new FHA applications.
Amazon has cut the field down to 20 applicants for the location of their newest headquarters… and guess what? Pittsburgh made the cut! Now, if their decision came down to solely housing affordability… a new warehouse would already be built in one of the spacious areas of land along the Monongahela river where one of the many steel plants use to reside… man… if it were only that easy.
Obviously, the cheapest option for Amazon would be the “Burgh” and not just from a housing perspective. The cost of living here is much lower than the other cities on list, but unfortunately our infrastructure is a mess. We need to desperately update our public transportation systems and dump some money into Pittsburgh International (our airport feels like a middle of a zombie movie where everyone is wiped out and only a few lone survivors are alive waiting things out). I mean, don’t get me wrong… I’m excited. We’re looking at billions being invested into the city and 50,000 new jobs being created over the next 10 – 15 years. The city will be buzzing, but all I can think about is that a lot of people are going to need somewhere to live. Average home price in Pittsburgh is around $130K… the next closest is Philly at $222K… if this does go through, the “Burgh” might not only be a great place to work for a data scientist… but also for young hungry finance majors with a knack for originating loans.
The opinions expressed in this post are the sole view of the writer and do not reflect the opinion of Princeton Mortgage Corporation.