With all of the struggles in the housing market nowadays there are occasional glimmers of positive news. Sometimes that comes in the package of lending and purchasing options being made available that are outside of the norm. Most people who are attempting to get a mortgage in today’s environment will find that there are tightened guidelines for financing that require higher credit scores, lower debt-to-income ratios, larger down payment requirements for better loan-to-value (LTV) situations for the lender, mortgage insurance (MI), and so on. If you’re a person who has saved upwards of 20% down, then you’re sitting in the “cat-bird’s seat” so to speak when it comes to house shopping.
For those that haven’t had a chance to save up that much cash, there are still some options available outside of just the FHA loan programs. Since Fannie Mae was one of the companies that was backing a lot of those packaged and securitized loans from the heyday, they’ve also now got a growing inventory of foreclosed homes on their hands. To help with depleting their inventory there is a program called HomePath that allows for low down payments for owner occupied purchases, the potential for investors with as low as 10% down, no mortgage insurance requirement, and more. To learn a bit more about this program, here is an article that the Seattle Times ran recently. An important thing to know is that you must use an approved real estate broker for purchasing a HomePath home – I’m happy to say that we at Team Reba do have members who are part of the program, so feel free to contact us if you are interested in learning more about one of the homes available on the HomePath site.
One of the other benefits of their loan programs is a similar type of option to the FHA 203k loan which allows for a purchase with the cost of repairs included in the loan. This is a great option for buying a home that provides the buyer an opportunity to not have to pay everything out of pocket after closing to get a house into good condition. The HomePath houses are supposed to be code compliant, but that doesn’t mean their in tip-top shape. With rates still in the 5%-ish range for these programs, that’s a steal over any line-of-credit (LOC) rates.
