Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990 TAG: 9003123184
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The "Community Homebuyer's Program" is for families with household incomes of less than $39,500. The program is a joint effort of Total Action Against Poverty, Sovran Bank and the General Electric Mortgage Insurance Co.
In addition to providing information to first-time home buyers, people completing the course will be eligible for mortgage loans at reduced down payments, preferred interest rates and reduced closing costs.
S. Dave Thomas Jr., vice president and regional marketing executive with Sovran, will teach the classes along with other Sovran workers. Attendance is limited to 25 people who are within the income limits and who intend to buy a home for ownership and occupation by one family.
Classes will be held on Mondays from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the church at Carroll Avenue and 20th Street Northwest, Roanoke. Sessions will focus on how to evaluate a buyer's ability to repay a mortgage, home ownership planning, loan closing, home maintenance and remodeling and how to avoid default.
Sovran is sponsoring similar programs in the Richmond, Hampton-Newport News and Norfolk areas. Correlli L. Rasheed, outreach director for TAP, and Colleen Wagner represent TAP in the project.
For information and registration, call TAP at 345-7092.
Thor Inc., general contracting firm located on Salem Turnpike, will move its operations to a former truck terminal on a 5.5-acre tract on Whiteside Street Northeast. John Whittle, president, said the terminal will be renovated and landscaped and he hopes to move in about six months.
The contractor already is using a smaller building on the site for equipment storage and maintenance. Whittle said the Whiteside site will provide more space at less cost than his earlier plan to expand on a three-acre site near his present location. Thor, which employs 75 to 100 people, is working on about 10 projects, Whittle said, including the $8 million Fintel Library expansion at Roanoke College.
The Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae, said last week that it would begin buying two-step mortgages. A two-step mortgage is a cross between an adjustable-rate loan, in which the rate can change every one, three or five years, and a traditional 30-year mortgage, whose interest rate does not change for the life of the loan. Two-step mortgages are designed to appeal to home buyers who expect to move within seven years but want the security of a fixed-rate mortgage in case they don't.
"It's a mortgage designed for the 1990s," said Fannie Mae President Roger E. Birk. "In this mobile society, home owners move and, therefore, repay their mortgages about every seven years."
Birk said two-step mortgages are aimed at military families, people transferred regularly by corporations and first-time home buyers who expect to buy a better home within seven years.
In the first step of the new mortgage, borrowers pay an interest rate up to three-eighths of a percentage point lower than on a 30-year, fixed-rate loan. After seven years, the rate is reset at 2.25 to 2.5 percentage points higher than the rate on 10-year Treasury notes.
On a typical mortgage of $83,000, home buyers would save $23 a month, or $1,932 over the first seven years. However, the rate for the remaining 23 years of the mortgage likely would be somewhat higher than on a new 30-year loan taken out at readjustment time.
For instance, if the rate on a 7-year-old, two-step loan were readjusted now, it would be 10.75 percent to 11 percent - one-half to three-quarters of a percentage point higher than fixed 30-year mortgages.
But in this case, unlike a refinancing, the borrower would pay no additional fees or charges at readjustment time.
Fannie Mae is a congressionally chartered, shareholder-owned company that helps finance about one of every eight home mortgages in the nation. It buys mortgages from lenders. It packages some into securities for resale to investors and buys and holds others. Associated Press
The New Jersey Association of Realtors, independent real estate agents, the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, financial institutions and other businesses have launched a "Yes You Can Buy a Home in New Jersey" campaign, a public awareness program designed to call attention to the many types of homes and financing programs available to first-time home buyers in New Jersey.
"The `Yes You Can' campaign is designed to make New Jerseyans aware of the fact that we are in a buyers market, a very good time, especially for the first-time buyer, to purchase a home," said Janet Barton, Realtors' association president. "Reasonable home prices and low interest rates make it possible for more people than ever in the recent past to purchase a home in New Jersey."
Through toll-free numbers, New Jersey residents can get information on how to buy a home and what mortgage programs are available. The yearlong program will include home buyer seminars.
Eric Anderson, staff member for the association, said the project was designed to offset a year and a half of negative publicity surrounding the housing industry. Some areas of New Jersey also have experienced a 1 percent drop in real estate values and sales were down about 14 percent in 1989, Anderson said.
To kick off the campaign, groups associated with housing had rallies in the state capital and the New Jersey assembly passed proclamations recognizing the effort.
by CNB