At 11:04AM today we received an e-mail stating that about $3.5 Million was now available for the non-target areas of the Home in Five Program. Money previously assigned to targeted areas were now released as non-target, meaning you didn’t have to be a first time home buyer to use these funds anywhere in Maricopa county. This is obviously very good news since we are working with a few buyers who could use these funds.
A little after 5pm we received a call stating that one of these buyers had an accepted contract. Aimee quickly jumped on the Home in Five website (lenders only) to reserve funds. She was stunned! There was only $229,000 left at about 5:25PM. This is a depletion rate of about $585,000 per hour! Wow.
Moral of the story is that these funds go fast. With 100% loans scarce everyone is looking for down payment assistance. There are still programs like the Home in Five out there which are available to needy borrowers, it’s just that there are lots of restrictions attached to them and oftentimes its only available on a first come first served basis.
Fortunately our borrowers loan size was smaller than fit under the available funds, so we were able to reserve the money for their purchase.
Read more on the Home in Five Down Payment Assistance Program.
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on Jul 29th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Isn’t that 3.5 million number a little misleading? I mean, that number represents the total loan amounts, and not the actual cash being given in assistance. The actual cash amount would just be 5 percent of that 3.5 million.. or a mere $175,000.. correct? So if you think about it, if the average home loan is 200K (just a convenient number I picked out), only about 15 home loans would eat that up.. and while that’s good that things are moving along.. 15 or 20 home loans across the whole of Maricopa County in one day isn’t as impressive as one would think.
on Jul 29th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Rob,
That is a good point. But that is how the numbers were announced. I just assumed there was a reason for it.
I certainly don’t want to mislead anyone. And yes it was about 22 or 23 loans that were disbursed.
on Jul 30th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Oh, I certainly didn’t mean to imply YOU were misleading anyone! Any implication was directed toward whoever is throwing those numbers out to the press. It’s much like that $7500 tax “credit” everyone’s touting from the mortgage relief bill. Sounds great until you consider the “recapture” aspect that no one’s really mentioning.. (which I still don’t fully understand.. and might make a good blog subject for you!.. Like, a person is repaying 5% per year for 15 years.. $500/yr.. but is that amount added directly to his/her tax burden, or just added to your net income during the calculation of his/her tax burden. Makes a HUGE difference which way that goes.)
on Jul 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
[...] called the Home In 5. This is such a popular program, that shortly after the funds were released, Shailesh Ghimire reported they there were all but gone. I suspect that the county will be expanding this program [...]
on Aug 3rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
[...] bond money programs or other rural county bond money programs for down payment assistance, but as Shailesh pointed out — it is available on a first-come, first-serve basis and these funds are usually gone [...]