In a move to try and divest itself of a lot of foreclosed homes, which are sitting on its books, the folks at Fannie Mae have decided to implement a program that they found successful last year. The offer is up to 3.5% of assistance in closing cost credits to OWNER OCCUPIED buyers. I put that in caps because this offer doesn’t apply to investors and you don’t want to lie and say it’s going to be owner occupied if your plans are to rent the place out or to flip it. That’s considered mortgage fraud and has the potential of being charged as a felony if discovered. And, trust me, lenders are looking more and more for those cases nowadays.
Back to the good news… what this means for buyers is that whether it’s a first time buyer, move up buyer, or someone who is downsizing, you can potentially get your closing costs covered – and if you use the HomePath financing option you can pay as little as 3% down (FHA is 3.5% minimum). A pretty swell deal considering how many of these homes are also priced below market.
Did you know that we as real estate agents can set up searches within the NWMLS to look for homes that are HomePath owned? So, if you want to seek out just these properties to know what’s available, we can do that for you. Just ask…
Also, as the title of this post suggests, there is a cut off for the program. It started as of yesterday, and you have to CLOSE your transaction by June 30th, 2011 – so that means if you want to take advantage of this program, you should get to house shopping!
As a reminder to our readers, the folks at Team Reba cover a lot of Puget Sound territory – from South Snohomish through most of King County and to North Pierce County. Basically, the core Seattle/Bellevue and Greater Puget Sound region. If you need assistance outside of those areas, we have trusted connections through our RE/MAX office to most areas of Washington State.
