Wednesday, April 1, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
R e a l
E s t a t e
S p e c i a l
17
R e p o r t
Be proactive in lining up financing to buy a home
Jim Cornelius
News Editor
Everybody knows that
nowadays it’s really hard to
get a loan, and you have to
have 20 percent down to buy a
house, right? Nope.
There’s a lot of mythology
and misinformation out there
about the lending climate for
homebuyers. Cort Horner of
Directors Mortgage in Sisters
is down in the trenches of the
mortgage lending world, and
he knows the lay of the land.
Certainly the pendulum has
swung away from the extremes
of pre-recession lending, when
anyone with a pulse was quali-
fying for a loan, but things
aren’t as tight and as difficult
as people assume.
“Right now we’re kind of
in that balanced place in the
middle,” Horner told The Nug-
get. “There’s a lot more oppor-
tunity out there than people
realize.”
The fundamentals of lend-
ing are still in play: Credit;
capacity (the ability to repay a
loan); and collateral (the mar-
ket quality of the home).
“If you check off those
boxes, the loan’s going to
work,” Horner said.
And there are a variety
of options available to suit a
variety of needs and circum-
stances. The key for a prospec-
tive homebuyer — including
those who washed out of the
housing market during the
recession and want to get back
in — is education. Know what
you need to do to get your
ducks in a row, and know the
difference between reality and
myth.
“One of the myths is the
down-payment,” Horner said.
There is a widespread
assumption that you need to
put 20 percent down to get a
loan going, but Horner says
there are other options as low
as 5 percent down and in some
cases (like a VA loan for veter-
ans), no money down.
The Sisters area is eligible
for USDA (Department of
Agriculture) rural-develop-
ment loans for qualifying buy-
ers. That’s true even inside the
Sisters urban growth bound-
ary. Depending on income and
size of a family, it is entirely
possible to qualify for a USDA
loan that can get you into a
home in Sisters or in a rural
subdivision.
“It’s a loan that a lot of peo-
ple can qualify for,” Horner
says. “If you’re looking at the
$350,000 home in Tollgate,
that’s a great qualifier.”
Now more than ever, get-
ting your financing aligned
before you get into the market
is critical.
“Go and learn what
your true financial situa-
tion is through a lender’s
eyes,” Horner says. “To buy
a house, go out and get pre-
approved. Not pre-qualified
— pre-approved.”
In Sisters Country and
across the nation, many people
lost their homes in the finan-
cial crisis and recession that
fell like a hammer in 2008.
Many of those people are now
in a position to get back into
the housing market. The lend-
ing situation for those folks is
far from hopeless.
Loan products have dif-
ferent “seasoning periods”
for people who have adverse
credit situations like a short
sale or foreclosure — a time
period they must wait before
they can again be eligible for
a loan. For conventional loans
that can be four to seven years,
but for many products its in the
three-year range.
“I’ve got, I think, six people
who are in that waiting period
oto.C
Ckph
isto
t o m e e t
their seasoning
requirement,”
Horner reported.
“We’re already
prepping them for
it.”
You can spend
that seasoning period
wisely, cleaning up your
credit. Get a real credit report
and a true score and find out
where you stand. There are
resources to help you take care
of problems, and Horner rec-
ommends using them to get
ahead of the game.
“I have personal experi-
ence with using credit repair,”
he said.
Once you understand your
credit situation, you can for-
mulate a plan to get into the
best position to act, knowing
what your true credit score is,
lb
om/i
usCa
what you can reason-
ably pull off in terms of
your all-important debt-
to-income ratio, what
price range you should
be looking in, and what
kind of monthly pay-
ment you can afford.
“My whole thing
is, come in and talk
to me,” Horner says.
“Maybe you can,
maybe you can’t.”
If you can, you can jump
into the market. If you can’t,
you’ll know what it will take
to get there.
The second-home market
used to be a pretty lively one
in Sisters Country. Realtors
report that that market is pretty
quiet, though it is showing
signs of life.
“I think the public has
become much more fiscally
responsible,” Horner says.
See FINANCINg on page 23
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