Following the end of the government shut-down, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Housing Service is once again issuing Section 502 Conditional Commitments, which are required for USDA loans to close. Per USDA, there were 3,236 outstanding Conditional Commitment requests as a result of the government shut-down. USDA Rural Housing staff is working to get those USDA Guaranteed Loans processed. USDA has temporarily set-up a team dedicated solely to processing rural development loans. The estimate is that this team will be able to process 400 loans per week. This is in addition to the normal loan processing done by USDA Rural Housing staff. They expect to get through the backlog in the next few weeks.
USDA staff are attempting to prioritize loan processing based on need. If you know a USDA borrower that has not received the Conditional Commitment and is facing an immediate closing deadline, or missed their closing and needs to close immediately, please reach out to NAR staff Sehar Siddiqi at ssiddiqi@realtors.org.