HUD USES DOWN PAYMENT ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS AS SCAPEGOAT.

Nehemiah, Ameridream; HUD has decided these are the bad guys.  The reason so many FHA loans fail is not poor origination, inferior underwriting, or basic fraud, it is the use of a down payment assistance program like one of those named above to get 100% funding on a 97.00% loan program.  I would love to see their data.  Dawn and I have been using DPA's in Northeastern Pennsylvania for more than a few years and as we track our loans we do not see these loans failing.  Yea, there was the couple that ended up losing the house, but I feel that that had more to do with the high interest rate 2nd mortgage that they got about one year after buying the house.  How did they get that 2nd mortgage with a 1st mortgage at 97.75% financing?  Did they get one of those 2nd mortgages that allow you to go over the value of the house, or was it a appraisal that really pushed value.  It was the 2nd mortgage that really hurt them, not using a down payment assistance program.  Using the DPA probably added about $15.00 to the 1st mortgage payment.  I'd love to see the demographics, I'd love to see the studies, I'd love to see the states that this is happening in, the cities, are they 1st payment defaults?  With all of the resources HUD has available why can't I, as a member of the lending industry, go to a website that will show me exactly what is going on with FHA loans.  This website doesn't exist.  And I have asked and would you believe the answer is: that this information has never been collated.  Ten years ago when HUD was hemoraging money due to straw buyer scams, the new director of HUD asked where is this happening, where are all of the foreclosures taking place, what area of the country?  The answer was we don't know, we've never looked.  It is time that HUD was managed with the same diligence that a private industry would be managed and all information be gathered and made available to the leaders of HUD and the lending industry so that decisions such as getting rid of the DPA's could be based on some sort of logic and reality and problems be pinpointed and addressed instead of using gut reactions and "I think so's."