The Federal Housing Authority is providing life support to the housing market in Boston and across the country. Yet at the same time, it is enforcing new regulations that will make it far more difficult for working class condo owners to sell their properties to new clients. So, while the deals are out there, be prepared for lots of paperwork and delays:
THE FEDERAL Housing Administration has been busy lately, propping up the housing market. The FHA’s out-sized role in real estate has earned it intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where legislators are already choking on the staggering tab Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are sticking them with. To its credit, the agency is moving decisively to repair its balance sheet and avoid a government bailout…
…But in Boston, one recent FHA move is sowing some unintended consequences: It’s threatening to wall off entire neighborhoods in the city and close-in suburbs from the working-class homebuyers the FHA serves. These buyers are running into trouble because of a quirk in Boston’s development history that has left a permanent imprint on the city’s geography….
…Scores of double- and triple-deckers have been chopped up into condos over the past decade. In large tracts of Dorchester, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Cambridge, Somerville, and Everett, there are few single-family homes, and even fewer buildings with condo associations that have cared to submit themselves to FHA scrutiny. People would rather not wade through a thicket of red tape, if it can be avoided. So, essentially, huge portions of Greater Boston are off limits to homebuyers. That’s because, for working-class home buyers, an FHA loan is all there is…
…Boston’s future as a vital and diverse organism lies with post-grads and young families – groups that would gladly take the city over the suburbs, if only someone would give them a mortgage. The longer urban neighborhoods remain closed to them, the more we invite a lifeless fractured split along class lines, with the rich on one side, the poor on another, and everybody else stuck waiting on the commuter rail.
Article by Paul Mcmorrow, from the Boston Globe, June 18, 2010.
For Questions about FHA Financing and Special FHA Offers, Please call Jason Schuster at 617-756-3029.
