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$500 DOWN AND YOU’VE GOT A HOUSE, IF YOU CAN AFFORD ONE
Daily News of Los Angeles (CA) - Sunday, March 6, 2005
Author: GREGORY J. WILCOX
Freddie Mac has new loan products Mortgage giant Freddie Mac is touting a new duo of loan products that will help people buy a house with as little as $500 out of pocket, good news in markets like this one featuring record prices.
Called ``Home Possible Mortgages,’’ the package of loan products is targeted toward families and what the company terms key community workers - those in health care, cops, firefighters and teachers across the country.
The loans feature low or no-down payments and flexible credit-underwriting standards, components expected to help thousands of families with nest-egg issues or flawed credit to buy a house.
Freddie Mac ‘s goal is helping low-and moderate-income borrowers anywhere in the country get an affordable, low-cost conforming conventional mortgage.
The key word is conforming, which means there is a limit on how much can be borrowed. In California, the conforming limit for this year is $359,650, up from $337,700, said Leslie Appleton-Young, vice president and chief economist at the California Association of Realtors.
That’s well below the median price in the state, Los Angeles County and the San Fernando Valley.
So using these tools might be harder here than other places. But it can be done if a buyer is willing to do a lot of looking, and maybe make some location compromises for ownership.
``They are really very important, but it varies depending on what community you are in. They are more attractive in the inland areas of the state,’’ Appleton-Young said.
Freddie Mac doesn’t make the loans but buys them from its huge base of mortgage issuers, which includes all the major players in California.
David Stevens , Freddie Mac ‘s senior vice president of single-family sourcing, said the program has a basic goal: getting more lenders to say yes to more borrowers.
Freddie Mac ‘s products will complement those already in the marketplace.
``There are a multitude of affordable products done by banks or that Freddie Mac provided to lender partners,’’ Stevens said.
What’s different is this program can be individually tailored to a buyers needs by lenders that use Freddie Mac ‘s Loan Prospector, an automated underwriting software.
``Tens of thousands of people in the mortgage business will have access to this product,’’ Stevens said.
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Thanks,...was going to see what we had going in California.... you answered that....