So I've been working with some new friends on buying their first home for the past 60 days. They have good income and credit but were a little short on down payment so I suggested that they take a first time home buyer class at ( CHAC ) Colorado Housing Assistance Corporation. They took the class and received their certificate. We looked at several homes in the SW Denver area. All of the homes we looked at were under 100K and were going to take a few bucks worth of fix up and that would take more money out of their pocket. So after placing offers on several homes and being rejected in place of cash offers from investors we finally got a HUD owned property under contract through a bid. This actually gave us the option of using either CHAC funds or the $100 down program through HUD.
Their lender Tami Pratt with Equity Lending 303-645-4068 gives me a call today to let me know that Aurora HOAP and CHAC were both short on funding and unable to help us at this time. She actaully took the time to make calls to the agencies to get the actual scoop straight from the horses mouth. They said that there was money for down payment assistance in a few select areas but not in Aurora or Denver at this time. In fact one of her colleagues was supposed to close on a home this week using those funds that dried up and is now scrambling to find help for their client.
Once the Federal Government did away with Ameridream and Nehemiah down payment assistance programs in October 2008, ( a large number of loans that used those programs ended up in default ) they failed to properly fund local agencies to handle the influx of new business that came their way. It was rumored that this would happen and now I see those rumors have become truth. So where can people go to find down payment assistance programs? In the Denver Metro Area I would suggest that you check out the local county and city Housing Assistance programs that are available. These can normally be found by googling the city and county websites. I would suggest a call to the program coordinator early on to find out their availability of funds. Many get funding throughout the year so if none is available now, there may be money available in the next few months.
Thank goodness that we won the offer on this $100 down payment program on the HUD home. Without it, they probably would not be able to close on the home next month. As a suggestion to our representatives in the Federal Government I would encourage them to use some of the TARP money or the new round of bailout money to fund these local Down Payment Assistance Programs. If they want to do everything to turn around the housing market, then they should have a program in place to help these first time home buyers take advantage of this great buying opportunity.
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