The number of new FHA mortgages granted to non-permanent residents has dropped to near-zero following President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders targeting immigrants, according to new data.
In a March 26 letter, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that non-permanent residents in the United States, including H-1B visa holders, would no longer be eligible for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), effective May 25.
The move, the letter said, was in line with President Donald Trump’s “commitment to safeguarding economic opportunities for U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents,” while also ensuring that “federal benefits, including access to FHA-insured mortgages, are reserved for individuals who hold lawful permanent resident status.”
The impact of these policy changes has already become evident in the U.S. housing market, “reshaping the housing market for non-permanent residents,” Alex Thomas of John Burns Research & Consulting (JBREC) posted on X.
A new report by JBREC, authored by Thomas and colleagues Eric Finnigan and Zack Ray, found that non-permanent residents, also referred to as NPRs, made up less than 1 percent of FHA loan volume nationally in June, down from nearly 5.5 percent a month earlier and over 6 percent in April.
In July and August, the share of non-permanent residents securing the government-backed loans issued by the FHA was near zero percent. That was the lowest level in the timeline provided by JBREC, which dates back to February 2018.
President Donald Trump said he “terminated” the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnel under the Hudson River in a surprise statement made during press conference Wednesday as tense negotiations over the federal government shutdown drag on.
“The project in New York — it’s billions and billions of dollars that (U.S. Sen. Chuck) Schumer (D-N.Y.) has worked 20 years to get,” Trump said, according to video of the event. “Tell him it’s terminated.”
Trump did not mention Gateway or New York’s Second Avenue Subway project by name, but called them the project in Manhattan.
Schumer is leading the Democrats effort to win back federal tax support for million of people covered by the Affordable Care Act, which lead to a government shutdown.
“We’re getting rid of programs that were negotiated in and they’re going to be terminated on a permanent basis,” Trump said. “We’re getting rid of billions of dollars of things we never wanted because of the fact they made this stupid move. They should really make a deal.”
Trump said U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought is “terminating a tremendous number of democrat projects the project in Manhattan it’s billions of dollars that Schumer has work 20 years to get, it’s terminated.”
Officials of the Gateway Development Commission, the bi-state agency overseeing construction, have received no communication from Washington.
“We have not received anything new, said Steve Sigmund a spokesperson. “We are declining to comment.”
A source with knowledge of the project said work continues on the project and nothing has changed or is different than it was this afternoon.
Lowering the listing price is becoming the norm for sellers, as the market doldrums linger. But sellers in the lower price ranges are the most aggressive, according to a new report from Realtor.com.
Overall, nearly one in five U.S. home sellers reduced their asking prices in September, the site reports in its latest monthly market report. But 21% of those listing at $350,000 or less are cutting their expectations more often than sellers in higher-priced brackets. The least expensive houses accounted for 40% of all listings for the month, the most of any bracket.
From there, the number of sellers lowering their prices falls as price ranges rise. For example, in the $350,000 to $599,000, which accounted for 22% of the listings, 20% of sellers cut their asking price.
In the $500,000 to $750,000 range, accounting for 18% of the listings, 21% had price reductions. In the $750,000-$1 million bracket, 8% of all listings, 18% saw their prices cut. And 13% of the houses listed above $1 million, accounting for 12% of all houses for sale, experienced price drops.
The trend, the report said, “is consistent with more motivated sellers at the bottom of the housing ladder, who need to sell in order to buy their next home, compared to patient and/or price-anchored sellers at the top.”
Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey, talks a lot about the state’s high cost of living. He talks about housing, too, but not often in the same sentence. New Jersey’s problem isn’t that it’s building too little housing, Ciattarelli says: It’s that it’s building too much. One ad posted to Ciattarelli’s Instagram account shows bulldozers cutting down trees behind ominous music and a short clip of his opponent, Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, saying “we’ve got to build more houses” on repeat.
“There’s an overdevelopment crisis in this state,” Ciattarelli said in his opening statement at the first gubernatorial debate last month. “We’re taking the ‘garden’ right out of the Garden State with all this overdevelopment.”
This is an unusual theme at a time when officials in both major parties and in virtually every state in the country are talking about the skyrocketing cost of housing, and typically blaming a shortage of supply for causing it. A recent study from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies found median home prices are a record five times higher than median household income. Republicans from Montana to New Hampshire to Florida have led efforts to promote more housing construction in recent years. Ciattarelli himself has even said there is a “shortage” of affordable housing.
But in New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country, he is betting that opposition to suburban development is a winning campaign issue. He’s taken aim at a state law, passed last year, which codifies a 50-year-old court case requiring every New Jersey municipality to contribute its “fair share” of affordable housing by zoning for new construction. “Jack opposes the current model,” he says on his campaign website, “because it is gobbling up open space, chasing wildlife from its habitat, increasing pollution from more idling cars on already congested roads, leading to more local flooding from stormwater management issues, and driving up property taxes due to endless legal fees and additional local services.” … By calling out “overdevelopment,” Ciattarelli is hoping to tap into a vein of frustration among municipal leaders trying to comply with the law, as well as ambient anxiety in many cities and towns about the loss of wooded areas. A group of towns clustered in the wealthy northern suburbs have filed a series of lawsuits trying to overturn the affordable-housing law. They say the law is overwhelming public services and forcing them to change the character of their communities.
“We can’t have high-density housing in the suburbs. Then we have no more suburbs,” says Mike Ghassali, the mayor of Montvale, N.J., and a lead plaintiff in the lawsuits. Ghassali, a Republican, says he supports affordable housing, but towns like his can’t keep up with the legal requirements to build more housing overall because they’re out of developable space. They’ve had to hire more police and build new water towers and other infrastructure to serve new developments. “We are for affordable, and against high-density,” Ghassali says.
This New Jersey home has some serious ties to the Revolutionary War.
It was ransacked, more than once, by British troops looking for hidden treasures. It was used as a food storage facility during the Revolutionary War because of its 20-inch thick walls. And, George Washington slept in the primary bedroom, leaving behind his breakfast dishes and a half a glass of wine, according to local historians.
The home is prominently located in the center of Long Valley, has five bedrooms, three full bathrooms and a separate second dwelling with two bedrooms and one bathroom. And it’s listed for sale for $750,000.
“It’s a 251-year-old house, so it’s going to take that special person who loves historic, big homes,” said Greg Brozowski, who listed it along with Bonnie Cerra, both of Coldwell Banker Realty in Mendham. “It’s in very good condition but it’s not a turnkey center hall colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac.”
The median sale price of a home in Long Valley was $788,000 in August, according to Redfin.
“The home is absolutely gorgeous but it does need some love,” Brozowski said.
The kitchen and electrical system could use updating, it could use some paint and outside stone work needs refreshing, he said.
The home is a value because of the “historic feel, uniqueness and the size of the house,” Brozowski said. “With some work it’s a $1.2-$1.3 million house, easy. It just needs someone with vision that appreciates the history and style to get it up to that.”
A massive number of workers were laid off in New Jersey last month, despite the state labor market adding jobs during the same period, according to new data.
Challenger, Grey & Christmas, a private firm that collects labor market data, recently released job and unemployment figuresfor August 2025.
The numbers paint a grim picture for New Jersey workers.
According to the Challenger report, 35,065 Garden State jobs were cut in August, up from 3,557 in July. So far this year, 61,760 New Jersey jobs have been eliminated, compared to just 7,754 in all of 2024.
Challenger’s report does not specify at which companies the cuts occurred.
Only two other states — California and New York — and the District of Columbia have reported more eliminated positions in 2025.
The report was released just weeks before the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics unveiled preliminary labor market estimates for August, which showed New Jersey added jobs amid the job cuts.
“Total nonfarm employment increased in August by 4,900 to a seasonally adjusted level of 4,389,200 jobs,” Gov. Phil Murphy’s office said in a news release. “The state’s unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage point to 5.0 percent.”
Mob wife is having a fashion moment. In real estate, it seems like many potential buyers don’t see the aesthetic as their own.
In and around New York — from Staten Island to Long Island to Fort Lee — once‑infamous homes tied to Mafia figures have lingered for years on the market.
The culprit isn’t the organized crime-world stigma — it’s the highly customized weight of their over-the-top finishes, idiosyncratic layouts and marble-heavy excess. To make them viable again, many must be gutted, refreshed or rebuilt entirely.
Take late Gambino family crime boss Paul “Big Paul” Castellano’s Staten Island stronghold at 177 Benedict Road in Todt Hill. It was listed for $18 million, which would have broken borough sales records if it traded hands for that sum — but this week, it exited the market with no takers.
This 33,000-square-foot palace, perched on roughly 1.7 acres with sweeping Verrazzano Bridge views, comes loaded with amenities: indoor and outdoor Olympic-sized pools, 13-car showroom garage, home theater, gym with a sauna, beauty salon, wine cellar, a solarium and then some.
Castellano, who was gunned down by John Gotti’s men in 1985 outside of Sparks Steak House in Manhattan, had the residence designed to resemble the White House, with a pillared portico and circular drive.
Originally listed in October 2023 for $16.8 million, it fell out of contract, was removed from the market, then reappeared in October 2024 at $18 million — only to be pulled again days ago.
“There are no other homes in that area or all of Staten Island priced that much,” Tom Le, who sold the recent record-breaking $8.5 million home across the street, told The Post.
Last year single-family home prices continued to climb steadily back to record-high multiples of household income. In our most recent State of the Nation’s Housing report, we document trends in the national price-to-income ratio and how this measure of homebuyer affordability varies across markets. An interactive map released with the report depicts how price-to-income ratios ticked up last year in markets across the country (Figure 1).
After declining the year prior, the national median single-family home price grew to five times the median household income in 2024, nearly matching previous record highs (Figure 2). Last year’s national home price-to-income ratio remains elevated compared to the 4.1 seen in 2019 following months of record-breaking price growth during the pandemic and dwarfs the far more affordable 3.2 measured throughout the 1990s. As a result, homeownership remains out of reach for many prospective buyers, especially those with moderate or lower incomes.
Prices continued to outpace incomes in many large markets across the country last year. Indeed, home price-to-income ratios rose in over three-quarters of the nation’s 100 largest metros (77 markets). As a result, home prices reached their highest levels relative to incomes in 35 markets.
As price-to-income ratios continued to climb, 39 markets had ratios above 5.0 last year, up from just 15 markets in 2019. And in seven higher-cost markets home prices were at least eight times the median income, the most since 2006. Home prices were highest relative to incomes in Western markets with persistent, severe affordability challenges. For example, the gap was highest in San Jose with prices more than twelve times the median household income (a record high across large markets), followed by Los Angeles (10.8 times), San Francisco (10.5), and Honolulu (10.3). Price-to-income ratios were also high in expensive East Coast markets such as Miami (8.0) and supply-constrained Northeast markets like New York (7.3) and Boston (6.6).
Meanwhile, a record low number of markets had relatively low home price-to-income ratios last year. Indeed, in just one-quarter of large markets home prices were less than four times the median income, a substantial decline from 59 markets in 2019. And only three markets had price-to-income ratios below 3.0 last year: traditionally more affordable places like Toledo (2.8), Akron (2.9), and McAllen (2.9). These affordable homebuying markets have dwindled significantly; in 2019 there were still 20 large markets where prices were less than three times the area median income.
The all-time-high home price-to-income ratios seen last year were mainly driven by rapid home price growth during the pandemic. Nationally, median single-family home prices rose by nearly one-half (48 percent) between 2019 and 2024, at more than twice the rate of median income, which rose by 22 percent. Similarly, in large markets across the country home prices grew by anywhere from 24 to 79 percent since 2019, while incomes only increased by 8 to 36 percent. Additionally, differences in home prices drove differences in price-to-income ratios across markets. Indeed, median single-family home prices ranged from $163,000 in McAllen to 12 times that in San Jose at over $1.9 million. Meanwhile, in the same markets, median income in San Jose was only three times that of McAllen.
Just a few years out from the pandemic-era housing boom, the market is stumbling. Many homeowners, anchored to pandemic-era expectations even as the housing market tilts in favor of buyers, would rather pull their listings or let deals fall through than cut asking prices too far or agree to costly concessions. Buyers, meanwhile, are now increasingly willing to walk away.
The result: Sales are stalling, while home prices keep climbing.
In September, 80% of markets saw price increases, the highest share in nine months, led by cities in the Northeast and Midwest, according to data released Monday by financial services company Intercontinental Exchange.
Borrowing costs play a role.Millions of Americans secured ultra-low pandemic-era mortgage rates, which they don’t want to exchange for current, higher rates, said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.
“For sellers, their option besides selling their home is to stay in their home with really cheap mortgages,” Fairweather said. “A lot of sellers who aren’t getting the prices they were hoping for are choosing to delist their homes, or they’re just keeping their homes on the market for a really long time, hoping that the market changes or a buyer comes along who is willing to pay the high price.”
“That strategy doesn’t really work, because buyers are facing these high mortgage rates, and they increasingly can’t afford to pay both high prices and high rates,” she added. … Recent housing market data points to a “disconnect” between home buyers and sellers, Fairweather said.
Google searches for “help with mortgage” have shot up to the highest level since 2009, when Americans were navigating the recession sparked by the bursting of the U.S. housing market bubble.
This recent rise might come as a surprise only weeks after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time since December this month, in a move that many—including President Donald Trump—were long wishing for to ease the U.S. housing affordability crisis.
But even though mortgage rates recently fell to their lowest level in months in anticipation of the widely expected Fed’s decision, they are now back on the rise. As of the week ending October 2, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage—the most popular form of home loan in the nation—was 6.34 percent, up 0.04 percentage points from a week earlier and 0.22 percentage points from a year earlier, according to Freddie Mac. … This uncertainty—which comes as signs suggest the U.S. economy is slowing—is likely making many American homeowners uncomfortable. A chart about the rise in Google searches for “help with mortgage” has gone viral on X, where users are discussing whether the country is facing a repeat of the foreclosure crisis which occurred in 2008.
With one month to go until Election Day, New Jersey residents in a recent poll say taxation is their biggest issue, they’re overall dissatisfied with the economy, and most believe the country is headed in the “wrong direction.”
The poll released by Stockton University on Friday collected responses from 705 voting-age residentsof the Garden State on Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill, Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli, incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy and President Trump. … Roughly 67% of those surveyed were at least somewhat dissatisfied with the current state of the economy, the results show, with 44% stating they were “very dissatisfied” with economic conditions. Only 20% rated their and their family’s financial situation as “better” than the year before, with about 39% saying they were worse off, and another 39% about the same as last year. … On the issues, 25% of those polled said taxes were the most important for the candidates to address, with “affordability or cost of living” getting 12% and the more general “economy” getting 9%.
Half of America’s major housing markets now have falling home prices
Fresh data shows that as of August, 25 of the 50 biggest U.S. metro areas—representing half of the country’s major housing markets—are seeing prices fall compared with last year.
That share has steadily climbed from just 14% in late 2024, underscoring how soft demand and rising active inventory for sale have coincided in greater downward pressure on prices across much of the country.
Back in November 2024, seven of the nation’s 50 largest metro-area housing markets (14%) had falling year-over-year home prices. … At the end of August 2025, 25 of the nation’s 50 largest metro-area housing markets (50%) had falling year-over-year home prices.
Crucial reports on U.S. inflation, job creation and unemployment are set to be delayed a week or more due to the government shutdown — and there’s even a danger that some inflation reports might not be produced at all.
The absence of these reports comes at a sensitive time for Wall Street and the Federal Reserve.
The U.S. labor market has taken a turn for the worse since the late spring, spurring the Fed to cut interest rates a few weeks ago for the first time this year. At the same time, inflation has crept higher, and the Fed has to be mindful of that as it weighs when to lower borrowing costs again.
Senior Fed leaders were expecting to see reports on employment and consumer inflation before they meet again Oct. 28-29 to consider another rate cut.
Now it’s unclear what they will see — and when.
The release of these economic reports will naturally depend on how long the government shutdown lasts. The longer it goes on, the bigger the delay — or worse.
Let’s start with the September employment report, which was due to be released Friday morning. Economists were expecting a small increase of 51,000 jobs.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency in charge of the report, had already completed nearly all of the work before the shutdown began. As a result, the jobs report can be published very quickly once the BLS reopens.
There was a lot of housing-promo hoopla in the media this morning about that 4.0% month-to-month increase in pending sales of existing homes in August, sign of a sudden burst of demand due to lower mortgage rates, or whatever, written by goofballs or AI that never look at a chart.
That 4.0% month-to-month seasonally adjusted increase in the Pending Homes Sales Index by the National Association of Realtors today was off near-record low in the prior month, and was still down by 30.1% from August 2019 and by 42.7% from August 2020.
And the index was below March 2025, when there was a bigger widely ballyhooed surge in demand, or whatever, that was then more than wiped out by the sharp decline in April. That’s how it goes with zigzagging month-to-month data (historic data via YCharts):
