Of the many things that are affected by the Minnesota Government Shutdown is a majority of the Department of Commerce.  The Department of Commerce does things like well, regulate commerce.  With it largely shut down, investigations and enforcement are hampered and any businesses that rely on licensing cannot make changes or additions until the doors open back up.

Real Estate Agents in Minnesota are required to be licensed and get re-licensed every 2 years by filing a renewal and completing 30 hours of continuing education.  Licenses expire on June 30th and quite a few agents did not complete their renewals timely.  Usually this just means a small penalty and a couple days of hassle.  This year however, if their license lapsed July 1st they will not be able to be reinstated until the government reopens… whenever that means.

I am quite confident that means 100, 200, or even more agents are currently without a career – if you do not have a current license it is illegal for you to practice real estate sales.  Further, we have somewhere around 100-150 newly educated and tested people each month that will not be able to get licensed until the doors reopen.  At the same time the number of real estate agents is still declining in Minnesota, so this is amplifying the trend… at least in the interim.

Agents that want to switch brokers and agents that are ready to open their own brokerage are also stuck for the same reasons.  Most of this stuff is now computerized and requires little to no human intervention but the servers were taken down at the time the lights went out.  If anyone wants to find out if someone is licensed, they won’t be able to do that till the lights come back on either!

As we now are nearing the end of the 2nd week of government malfeasance, I cannot help but wonder how long this will go on.  For those of us who are still licensed, there will be just a smidge less competition for buyers and sellers – for however long this problem continues.