Real estate firms with one worker got $3.9 billion in government-approved Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. But during Covid, the housing market boomed.
Highlights
- Gary Goldberg, a Santa Barbara, California, real estate agent, sold more than $27 million worth of luxury homes during the pandemic’s first year.
- Federal records show he also applied for and received two loans totaling $95,832 via the federal government’s Covid relief Paycheck Protection Program.
- So far $3.1 billion of these real estate loans have been forgiven, and the government has significantly sped up its forgiveness in the past eight months.
- For the remaining $800 million in loans, borrowers have either not asked for forgiveness, they have been denied or the SBA and the lenders who issued the loans have not yet granted it.