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8/7/2019 Sally Bundy Helps Her Clients http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sally-bundy-helps-her-clients 1/4 1 Charlie Foxworth From: No Reply [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 7:31 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Beaumont Enterprise E-Edition Article [email protected] sent you this article. Beaumont Enterprise 04/04/2011, Page A01  It's a home buyer's market Down payment isn’t as big an obstacle in SE Texas as it might be in other places  KOUNTZE By Dan Wallach [email protected] (409) 838-2876 Karl and Kim Huch just closed on their first home and spent this weekend moving in. It proves homes are selling and buyers are qualifying for loans — at least in Southeast Texas. The Huches were married May 29, 2010, and knowing they wanted to buy their own home, they began to plan for it right away. They cleared away the wedding and honeymoon REAL ESTATE, page 6A 

Sally Bundy Helps Her Clients

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Charlie Foxworth

From: No Reply [[email protected]]Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 7:31 AMTo: [email protected]: Beaumont Enterprise E-Edition Article

[email protected] sent you this article.

Beaumont Enterprise 04/ 04/ 2011, Page A01  It's a home buyer's market

Down payment isn’t as big an obstacle in SE Texas as it might be in other places 

KOUNTZE 

By Dan Wallach 

[email protected] (409) 838-2876

Karl and Kim Huch just closed on their first home and spent this weekend moving in.

It proves homes are selling and buyers are qualifying for loans — at least in Southeast Texas.

The Huches were married May 29, 2010, and knowing they wanted to buy their own home, they began to planfor it right away.

They cleared away the wedding and honeymoon

REAL ESTATE, page 6A 

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 Kim Huch cleans the windows in her new home in Kountze. She noted mortgage lenders’ stringent attention toprospective buyers’ finances: ‘They documented everything. I even had to note a $200 Christmas gift —anything that didn’t come from payroll.’

Photos by Tammy McKinley/The Enterprise

‘We knew we’d need five figures for a downpayment, fees and an inspection,’ Karl Huch said of the amount heand his wife saved to buy their first home.

Article Continued Below 

See REALESTATE on Page A06

REAL ESTATE:In wake of housing crisis, lenders do take a closer look at finances

Continued from page 1A

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 debts, did their research, developed a relationship with a real estate agent and a mortgage lender, and started tosave for the down payment.

“We knew we’d need five figures for a down payment, fees and an inspection,” said Karl Huch, 28, anaccountant at the Spindletop Center in Beaumont.

Lenders in some of the states with the most distressed real estate markets won’t even consider approving a

mortgage without 20 percent in a down payment. But such a requirement in Southeast Texas would eliminate upto a third of prospective buyers, said Re/Max agent Sally Bundy, whose clients include the Huches and Gustavo“Gus” Martinez, a 27-year-old Motiva Enterprises Port Arthur operator.

But even here, mortgage lenders are taking a much closer look at prospective homebuyers’ finances in the wakeof the recent housing crisis.

“They documented everything,” said Kim Huch, 26, an environmental analyst at the Lower Neches ValleyAuthority. “I even had to note a $200 Christmas gift — anything that didn’t come from payroll.”

Karl Huch said he began to pack a lunch for work to save up.

“Counting nickels is hard, but it pays off,” he said.

The Huches bought in Kountze, near where both sets of parents live and with lower taxes and insuranceratesthaninBeaumont. Once they cleared the hurdles of qualifying for a loan, their monthly note will be in thesame range as the rent they’d been paying.

Martinez is not as far along in his quest to become a firsttime home buyer.

He and his wife and three children are living in a twostory townhome and need a bigger place. Martinez saidthey found a house they like on Westgate Drive in Beaumont and put in an offer.

He’s made it through prequalification for a mortgage, meaning he has shown appropriate pay stubs and has agood credit score.

“It’s a lot of information you have to give,” Martinez said. “I was surprised by how much you have to pay infees and how much you have to put down.”

But, before insurance and taxes, his house note will be about $40 a month cheaper than his rent.

Martinez said he’d been planning to wait a while before buying a home, but realized the inte rest rates were toofavorable right now to put it off. And there are plenty of homes for sale right now as well, he said.

“It’s a buyer’s market, but it’s tougher to be a buyer,” Bundy said, referring to the financial hurdles prospectshave to jump. “If you qualify, there’s good stuff out there.”

“We weren’t aware of how important our credit scores were” in trying to buy, Kim Huch said.

This is the number that lenders look at to decide whether a borrower is a good risk. There are threecreditreporting agencies that collect data on people regarding whether they pay bills on time, have too muchdebt or lack enough of a credit history to show they are capable of paying a mortgage.

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Those three credit-reporting agencies are TransUnion, Experian and Equifax.

“Credit reports are incredibly impo rtant,” Bundy said. “The first hurdle is your credit score and a 640 is prettymuch a minimum.”

Cory Romero of Patriot Bank said a prospective home buyer with a credit score of 620 and a down payment of at least 3.5 percent likely could qualify for a loan.

There are a variety of loans available — FHA, the Veterans Administration, the U.S. Department of Agricultureand conventional ones like banks and credit unions.

“Our real estate market is sporadically busy,” Romero said. “Our biggest problem is people listening to nationalnews. Is 20 percent required here? Absolutely not. That’s in declining market areas in Arizona, Nevada,California and Florida. In Texas, our real estate is doing pretty well.”

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