A mortgage without payments too good to pass up?
If you’re at least 62 years old and looking for a home, Seasons at Prince Creek West in Murrells Inlet has a new program aimed at you.Dock Street Communities, which owns the active-adult community, will sell a home with no mortgage payments to seniors for a downpayment of 30 percent to 50 percent.That means that the company would expect $126,000 down for a $300,000 home, said Scott Trembley, vice president of sales. But no more mortgage money would be required.Buyers can pass their homes on to heirs or just give them up when they die. Trembley said heirs have to sell inherited homes, but they won’t have to pay a cent of what may be left unpaid, even if the sales price is less than what’s owed.“[The program] gives them an opportunity to purchase their dream house … at about one-thirds of the price,” Trembley said.The downpayment varies with age, he said, with older buyers having to pay less than the younger ones. Buyers may ask for a fixed or variable rate mortgage.Basically, the arrangement is a front-end version of a reverse mortgage that lets homeowners get the equity out of their homes before they die. When they do, heirs or a sale of the home would satisfy the loan.It is the only government-insured reverse mortgage. Lenders get the remainder of their money when the homes are resold, hopefully for more money than is owed on them.If a husband and wife are making the purchase, Trembley said they both must be at least 62 years old.Trembley said that Seasons is getting two to three calls a day because of the arrangement, which it has offered for about a month. The company now has 22 prospects in the pipeline and expects four to five closings this month.The program was created four years ago by the Federal Housing Administration, Trembley said, but not advertised. He heard about if from customers, researched it and instituted it at Seasons. Officially, it’s called a home equity conversion mortgage, or HECM for short.Trembley said that Seasons has 123 home sites left, which he estimated will be gone in 1 1/2 years.“We’re always building inventory homes,” he said. “We have 10 to 12 homes on the ground.”
