My speciality for the last 3 years has been primarily to focus on helping 1st time home buyers make the dream of home ownership a reality.  Wow what a cliche I just said.  Anyhow my question of the week from many real estate agents is:  How am I going to help buyers who having very little or nothing down?

In the past, the answer was pretty straight forward, we would look into down payment assistance.  With Housing Bill HR-3221 doing away with my favorite pet, clients, lenders and real estate agents are scrambling to find good solutions to help these buyers get into homes. 

So here are some solutions I came up with to help buyers with little or nothing down.  Some of the cities have programs for low income housing folks and these funds if approved usually can be used for down payment and closing costs.  We have the Maricopa County Home in 5 Bond Program.  These funds come and go, but if available at the time can work out great for down payment.  HUD Homes!  Hud offers all kinds of incentives to move their inventory and sometimes they will only require the buyer to put $100.00 down on a new FHA loan with a full price accepted offer.  Also do not forget that we can still use down payment assistance from family.  So Mom, Dad, Brother or Sister can help with a gift for the down payment.  Also multiple family members can gift funds so you can pool the gift funds together.  Last do not forget about those 401K funds you have set aside with your employer.  Did you know that you can borrow against your 401K to have funds for your down payment.  Finally, we may have to just start saving money like in the good old days.  If it worked for our parents and grandparents to put money down, then why can it not work for us?

Creative solutions is now the name of the game.  By thinking outside the box and not turning to statements like “it cannot be done”, I can help many more homebuyers achieve homeownership.

After 24 days of higher mortgage rates, we are finally starting to see some relief.  This week we saw the biggest move of  mortgage rates in the last 3 weeks.  Most of this came about after oil prices and inflationary concerns are finally being put in check.  We saw mortgage rates on the 30 year fixed come down by 3/8 percent in rate.  This is now a good time to put yourself in a position to lock in that 30 year fixed.