The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority could learn as early as this week if it will be receiving millions of dollars to revive efforts to fund mortgages for low-and moderate-income home buyers.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the Obama administration is close to committing as much as $35 billion to state and local housing agencies such as CHFA in yet another effort to prop up the struggling housing market.
“We have not seen any of the details yet,” said Rachel Basye, marketing and strategic development director for CHFA. Although she said they don’t how much of the $35 billion that CHFA would receive, it is a fair assumption that it would be many millions – possibly tens of millions – of dollars.
For her part, she doesn’t even want to guess, since every federal program has a different formula for distributing the funds.
The Wall Street Journal article wasn’t a complete surprise to Basye.
“We have been following the discussions at the federal level for a while,” Basye told me. “Our national trade organization has been working on this since last fall, when the bond market kind of collapsed.”
Last year, CHFA issued $349 million in single-family home bonds. So far this year, it has issued $90 million in bonds.
“We have changed our business model completely; we’re basically just not issuing bonds right now -or at least no where near the same capacity as in the past,” Basye said.
CHFA does not distribute the bond proceeds directly to home buyers. But qualified borrowers, through lenders that participate in the programs, typically get below-market rate financing through the bond issues.
Basye said the $35 billion funding would be “extremely welcome. We will certainly be interested in seeing the details of the plan.”
