Monday Morning Cup of Coffee takes a look at stories across the HousingWire news desk, with more coverage to come on bigger issues.
Instead of Halloween prep and pumpkin flavored everything, America is focused on one thing: the partial government shutdown. Heading into the third week, three of the world’s most powerful bankers warned Congress about the potential outcomes if America defaults on its debt, an article in Reuters said.
The U.S Treasury said it expects to max out its borrowing authority next week as lawmakers remain at an impasse over raising the debt limit.
Meanwhile, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase (JPM), explained that banks are already spending significant amounts of money preparing for the possibility of a default.
“We need global growth," he said. "We are on the verge of getting it. Please let's not shoot ourselves in the foot."
But since the partial government shutdown is still in motion, government data and statistics remain on hold, causing more emphasis to be put on third-quarter earnings.
According to an article in MarketWatch, investors will be looking closer at quarterly corporate metrics as a way of filling in the gaps from a lack of government data.
Stocks did start to rebound last week amid signs of thawing in the government shutdown, but talks stalled over the weekend.
President Barack Obama rejected the latest proposal from the House Republicans, and Senate Democrats failed in an attempt to raise the borrowing limit.
Upcoming third-quarter earnings reports include Goldman Sachs (GS), Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC).
Taking a look down south, Dallas is suffering from a lack of inventory, with homebuilders scrambling to keep up with demand, the Dallas Morning News explained.
Dallas ranks as the second busiest homebuilding market, with about 20,000 single-family homebuilding permits for the year ending in August – second only to Houston, which has approximately 33,000.
New home sales were up about 14% in the third quarter, while quarterly home starts have more than doubled since the worst of the recession back in early 2009.
But despite the huge boost in demand, Dallas homebuilding has a long way to go before it gets back to where it was seven years ago.
Due to the crisis, home starts fell more than 70%, causing more than half the builders in the area to either go broke or pull out of the market.
New York is facing a housing crunch of its own, with Bill de Blasio, the guy that could be New York’s new mayor, stuck between choosing affordable housing and preservation, the New York Post reported.
The prospective candidate said expanding affordable housing is one of his top priorities and vows to build 200,000 affordable units.
However, this might be more difficult if preservationists succeed in getting more of Manhattan landmarked.
Currently, nearly 30% of the borough’s properties are covered, and in some neighborhoods, the figure is double.
Additionally, since 2008, there have been no units of affordable housing built in landmarked districts in Manhattan and only five since 2003.
The trend is only getting worse as advocates have moved from designating individual sites with specific historic importance to defining whole neighborhoods as landmarked districts.
As a result, de Blasio may have a little bit more difficulty fulfilling both obligations.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported no bank closings for the week ending Oct. 11.
