Short YouTube monologue (Scott Selleck) describing how a government shutdown is harming federal workers and disrupting housing markets. Cited impacts include local New Jersey federal employees (22,000+ affected), national counts of furloughed/unpaid workers, last pay date (October 10), mortgage payment difficulties, frozen USDA loans, FHA/VA processing delays, lapse of the National Flood Insurance Program since September 30, and effects on daily home closings/transactions and buyer behavior (delays/stops).
The real impact here, who's really getting affected? The federal workers are in crisis. Over 22,000 New Jersey federal employees are impacted. Nationwide, 700,000 are furloughed and 1.5 million are working without pay. That's crazy. The last paychecks they got was October 10th, and many are now starting to miss mortgage pay. These are our neighbors in Fort Lee, Edgewater, Leonia, Tenafly, Englewood face some real financial hardships. And home buyers, they feel like they're stuck in limbo. 17% of Americans delaying mortgage are buying a home right now because of the government shutdown and about 7.5% have just basically stopped. Here's a concrete problem. USDA loans completely froze. No new loans are at all out there. FHA and VA loans, major processing delays with skeleton crews trying to get these things through. Flood insurance. The National Flood Insurance programs have completely lapsed since September 30th. If you're buying near Hudson river, near the Hudson river or the Edgewater waterfront communities, your lender requires flood insurance. Right now, flood insurance isn't available in these areas. With the shutdown, this is affecting 3,600 homes closing daily nationwide right now and about one $1.6 million in transactions every day. Homeowners that are at risk. If your flood insurance policy expires during this shutdown, you could lose coverage entirely. Federal workers facing impossible choices between paying mortgages versus buying groceries right now. It's really not fair. Of all the people, the overall mood. Redfin chief of economics said it perfectly. People are thinking, we've dealt with the tariffs, job losses, a volatile market, and now we have a government shutdown. Really, what's next? The longer this drags on, the more damage it does to the market confidence, which we really don't need right now at the moment.
