JANUARY 15TH, 2019

It is now day 25 of the longest government shutdown in US history, and the effects of that are starting to set in. Unfortunately, those effects are anything but positive. The shutdown is estimated to be negatively impacting over a million households across the country. Aside from the over 800,000 federal workers who are not being paid (of which many are at risk of foreclosure, eviction, and loan defaults), USDA and FHA borrowers are in a state of limbo, and the financial services industry is also starting to really feel the sting. The inability of people to obtain IRS income verifications has created a massive backlog in loan applications, flood insurance policies were halted for a time, the Small Business Administration hasn’t been able to process or approve loan applications for small business, banks and credit unions are having to make many adjustments to their rates and fees in order to meet affected consumers, agriculture lenders are hurting, and many more entities are being negatively affected. If the shutdown continues, things are only looking to get worse.