Gipper
Well-Known Member
67 cents gets you a house...and the Crazy Train keeps on rollin'...
New Program for Buyers, With No Money Down
By JOHN LELAND
Published: September 4, 2010
MILWAUKEE — When the housing bubble burst, one of the culprits, economists agreed, was exotic mortgages, including those that required little or no money down.
Porfiria Gonzalez and her son, Eric, 10, outside their new home in Milwaukee. They were able to move out of a rental house in a neighborhood with a high crime rate.
But on a recent evening, Matthew and Hannah Middlebrooke stood in their new $115,000 three-bedroom ranch house here, which Mr. Middlebrooke bought in June with just $1,000 down.
Because he also received a grant to cover closing costs and insurance, the check he wrote at the closing was for 67 cents.
“I thought I’d be stuck renting for years,” said Mr. Middlebrooke, 26, who earns $32,000 a year as a producer for a Christian television ministry.
Although home foreclosures are again expected to top two million this year, Fannie Mae, the lending giant that required a government takeover, is creeping back into the market for mortgages with no down payment.
Mr. Middlebrooke’s mortgage came from a new program called Affordable Advantage, available to first-time home buyers in four states and created in conjunction with the states’ housing finance agencies. The program is expected to stay small, said Janis Smith, a spokeswoman for Fannie Mae.
Some experts are concerned about the revival of such mortgages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/us/05mortgage.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=67 cents&st=cse
