New Homeownership Bill (HR 600) to Reform and Save DPA Introduced January 21, 2009. Click here to view bill.
Below is a copy of an open letter sent to President Obama seeking his support of H.R. 600, the FHA Downpayment Reform Act, recently introduced by Congressman Al Green (D-TX) with bi-partisan support of Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Gary Miller (R-CA).
January 26, 2009
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20006
Dear Mr. President,
Congratulations on your historic inauguration. Your swearing-in was a defining moment in American history – a moment when our nation lived up to its creed that all men are created equal. We wish you and Congress well in these challenging times.
You are aware of the troubles we face in our economy, particularly our housing market. New homebuyers have vanished. Housing stats are at their lowest level in a half century. More than 2.3 million homes stand vacant in our communities. The loss of homebuyers is weighing down the broader economy, hurting home good stores, mom and pop shops, builders, construction companies, and local governments, all of whom depend on a stable housing economy for revenue. Economists across the political spectrum agree: the housing market lies at the root of our economic challenges.
So what can we do? To stabilize the housing market, we are proposing common sense solutions that will educate homebuyers and will give credit-ready homebuyers an opportunity for affordable homeownership and incentivize them to enter the market. We hope you will join us.
You stated in December that, “we need to move past the stale arguments that say low-income Americans shouldn’t even try to own a home.”
We agree, Mr. President. And we are ready to help. At a time when most are proposing solutions that cost the taxpayer money, we are supporting no cost bipartisan legislation in Congress (H.R. 600) to reauthorize and reform downpayment assistance programs funded in part by sellers, also known as DPA, which expired under federal law last year. DPA funding from qualified non-profits helped more than one million creditworthy families and individuals become homeowners from 1998 to 2008, and generated $24 billion in economic activity in just a five year period alone, according to a 2007 study by George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis. Further, according to a soon to be released study by Dr. Robert Fountain at California State University, DPA was responsible for creating 235,000 jobs over the past decade and during the twelve months preceding the elimination of DPA helped generate $4.6 billion in local and state tax revenue. These are dollars that state and local economies throughout America have come to rely upon. If this program remains closed, however, more than 300,000 aspiring homeowners – each of whom is deemed creditworthy by the Federal Housing Administration - will be shut out of the home buying process annually and billions of dollars and thousands of jobs will remain out of reach for our local communities. Our economy simply cannot afford this. We respectfully urge you to support H.R. 600, The FHA Downpayment Reform Act.
You stated in your inauguration that we must “ end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”
We agree, Mr. President. And we are ready to help. We hope to join hands with your Administration and Congress to find bipartisan support for the policies that will shape our housing market in the future. The past is the past, some people will remain critics of the DPA program and not move past stale arguments that no longer apply; what matters now is our shared pursuit of a more stable economy based on long-term, sustainable homeownership.
You stated in your campaign that we must not repeat “ the cycle of bubble and bust” that has plagued our economy.
We agree, Mr. President. And we are ready to help. To accomplish such sustainable and responsible homeownership, AmeriDream has educated more than 60,000 potential homebuyers over the last decade and will redouble its education efforts in the coming decade. Studies show that homebuyer education programs lead to more successful homeownership. Further, we believe in FHA’s goal to provide safe, sanitary and affordable housing for low and moderate income families. We believe that if more homebuyers of yesterday chose a FHA insured loan, our country would be better off today. We support a suggestion that you made in 2007 to develop a Home Score system, a system to create a simplified, standardized metric for home mortgage allowing prospective homebuyers to easily compare various mortgage opportunities so that an educated and informed homebuyer can make an educated and informed decision. The more successful our homeowners are, the less likely our economy is to be felled by another housing bubble.
Mr. President, we respectfully ask for your support. We encourage you to back H.R. 600, The FHA Downpayment Reform Act, so that creditworthy working class homebuyers may once again stimulate the housing market. The reauthorization of DPA is supported by the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the National Association of Realtors, The National Association of Mortgage Brokers, the US Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Home Builders, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO - the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the National Association of Counties, many other state and local organizations and hundreds of thousands of other Americans who have voiced their support to their elected officials. We urge you to make homebuyer education a central part of you economic recovery strategy. Finally, we welcome your commitment to make petty grievances in our government a part of our past. Simply put, our country can afford no less.
We look forward to working with your administration as we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back to making responsible and sustainable homeownership for all a priority.
Best wishes to you, your family, and your Administration in these historic times.
Sincerely,
I guess if she is targeting me, she is leaving everyone else alone. I don't think so. the abuse and slander from searchingtoo is now being lynched onto another bloggers. I came on this site in September to help people to avoid scams and write blogs on Real Estate. I never once used this blog to give out my personal information to gain business. I am a successful Realtor with almost 10 years experience. I will go further to say that I have dedicated my life to this business and I take pride in helping people. This woman was trashing me and the industry of Realtors saying, "keep your trash out of Blue Springs, you have done enough damage". I tried to keep myself professional and ask her to stop using personal attacks and explained about the blog. I asked her to stop being inflammatory after putting up with more abuse. Then she left seven more comments on my page, one of which said I was prostituting myself here for business, so I blocked her. She wrote back and said she was going to write her own blog on "Down Payment Assistance", and that she was going to rip me apart. In my business I save everything, including my posts and comments. When I told her this, her only comment was “Ohhh I’m scared!”, but she seems to think she can continue with her written attacks and sling insults. Notice that she has not posted any real estate blogs until yesterday, but claims she is doing a "series" on it. She has also sent other users on her behalf because she was blocked. The only thing she has is to state, "Fake boobs and lips", attacking my appearance. Then she added that KCPD has my picture in their lockers and that I sleep with them all. After I deleted everything to get away from her, she continued to slander me saying I have created other accounts, which is what SHE does. Searchingtoo does not have a life, so she is trying to destroy mine because I blocked her from my page. I tried to reason with her three timesbut I do not appreciate insults. I feel like 6th grade is in session. Making remarks such as "Ripping me a new one missy", and "I have not seen nothing yet", is childish but also threatening. Grow up!
I believe Sean Pernice should be arrested for murdering his wife. He told KCPD his wife has been missing since January 2nd, she just walked off. They found her phone by a park. He later let her dog go and LE saw this. They realised he was not expecting he to come home. Sean is a fire fighter. They have not made him a formal suspect even though LE found trace evidence of maybe blood several places in the home. Sean will not allow the three children to see their grandparents. I know this guy was in the military and i believe he was just not stable after coming home based on a news cast he did when he came home. She told him she wanted a divorce. Is this one of those cases "If I can't have her, no one will?" I firmly believe he killed his wife and am worried the children are endangered. They should be out of any potential harms way. If he killed his wife then he has the potential to kill again if he knows he may go down for this he may just do something. It would be nice to ralley as a communtiy and show suppport to this family in the name of justice for Renee and go in front of her home on public property and picket him. He knows where she is and she needs to be found. Justice for Renee and prayers to her children and her family and friends. I have the address and it is public knowledge but will post it after I know it will be okay to do so.
This was one of my biggest issues about the DPA going away was it was going to do more harm than good to get rid of it. I was amazed to see this email in my box today. I did a doulble take. I figured it is gone and now if you do not have 3.5% to put down on a home besides your inspection money you just don't buy. People were and are lining up for MHDC money and taking advantage of city grant money when and where available. That money was running out as soon as it came out. Can this be true????? I was about to turn over another chapter after ten years of helping people buy and sell Real Estate. It has been really hard these past 2 years and did not see a light at the end of the tunnell. I am trying to stick it out. It is not that i am slow quite the opposite. I am working like a dog 50 times more each file than ever before. Short Sales are a nightmare but I have 5 going because no one else will wants to do them. I am working with buyers and I had a closing on the 2nd and that one was a bank owned property and it was worse than a short sale to get done. They made up the rules as they wnet along kept changing closing date and the buyer almost walked. I fought tooth and nail and managed to get it closed. Original date was 12/19 the bank extended to 1/2 and then tried saying no 1/15. I said no way. We closed on 01/2 and today I just recieved my check. I waited almost 2 weeks when I should have been paid the day of closing or soon after. Just pathetic. A qualified buyer makes a bid on a property over asking price and it sits over the weekend because it is bank owned another buyer comes in on Monday and makes a low cash offer and the bank accepts the low cash offer. People don't get paid in cash at closing so why would they lose out more money. I guess cash still talks but who can blame them when we still have bad lenders approving people who should not be approved and the deal falls through at closing. OBTW... the lender from last year that screwed over several people is no longer a loan officer, he decided to open up a nusiness doing credit repair. People beware a scammer wears many hats..... But here is the email I recieved today
January 12, 2009
We have been informed that a bill to reinstate reformed downpayment assistance will be introduced as early as tomorrow. The bill is expected to be introduced by Congressman Al Green (TX) with bipartisan support. The bill will have the same language as unanimously passed last year by the House Financial Services Committee.
We will keep you informed as we continue to support efforts to reinstate downpayment assistance.
AmeriDream
DPA’s are not going away!!!
Chairman Frank and HUD Secretary Preston Negotiate DPA Agreement
Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, has discussed publicly the fact that he has negotiated an agreement with HUD Secretary Steve Preston that will provide for the continuation of privately funded down payment assistance.
The agreement allows HUD to impose risk-based pricing on down payment assistance transactions which provides Secretary Preston the fiscal protection he seeks for the FHA insurance fund.
According to an Inman News article published today, Chairman Frank is quoted as saying "The FHA loved the ban on down-payment assistance (but) hated the ban on risk-based pricing," Frank said at Saturday's hearing. "That seemed to me to offer an opportunity. So (HR 6694) will replace both bans with middle ground -- and it will pass the House, I can guarantee you. What you want to do now obviously is talk to your senators. We think it will go through there -- it has the approval now of the Secretary of HUD."
Thanks to the advocates of down payment assistance, there is significant momentum in this direction. Genesis “Preferred Program” urges all supporters to continue their campaign to save DPA by contacting their Senators and request a swift passage of pro-DPA legislation.
Read the entire article:http://www.inman.com/news/2008/09/10/congress-w
eighs-reprieve-seller-funded-gifts
This means in quick that the down payment assistance will continue to be available with a small pricing adjustment on the interest rate!
