November 07, 2004|By KENNETH HARNEY
Beware of strangers bearing cash to cut your home purchase down payment - especially when your mortgage lender won't know a thing about it.
That's one conclusion emerging from the recent start-up - and abrupt suspension - of a zero-down payment program named "SNAP."
SNAP is an acronym for the "Sell Now Assistance Program." Until recently, it was promoted for use by home sellers and buyers in 48 states - all but Hawaii and Alaska - by the Franklin Foundation Inc., a nonprofit organization in Gaithersburg.
Now SNAP is on ice, at least temporarily. The company's Web site, www.snapprogram.com, is now virtually blank, referring visitors only to Franklin's toll-free telephone number.
But the details of its operation should give pause to lenders and mortgage borrowers alike. The new wrinkle, announced late last summer, was this: For interested homebuyers and sellers, Franklin would "facilitate" the creation of a bank account in the name of the homebuyer, after the borrower signed a federal "W-9" taxpayer identification form. The buyer's bank account would receive deposits of up to $50,000 from third-party "funding sources" working with Franklin.
As part of the arrangements, participating home sellers would be required to repay the amount of the funds deposited in the buyer's bank account, plus an "administrative fee" of 10 percent, to the funding source that made the deposits. The cash in the account could be used for the buyer's down payment and closing costs on a mortgage, which would be forwarded to the closing agent in time for the loan settlement.
The money in the borrower's new bank account would be the identical sum that Franklin's own documents, required to be signed by the home seller, defined as "a loan that is repayable following settlement."
Now the plot thickens: On its Web site, Franklin emphasized that the source and nature of the down payment cash in the homebuyer's new bank account would "NOT appear on the HUD-1" settlement sheet. In other words, the mortgage lender actually funding the loan through a mortgage broker would likely be in the dark about the fact that the homebuyer's cash - documented in the loan application file with a Verification of Deposit (VOD) form signed by the participating bank - had been provided by a third party.
Franklin Foundation also "strongly" recommended that all SNAP loan transactions, anywhere in the country, receive title and settlement services from First Title & Escrow Inc. of Rockville. Franklin explained in its promotional materials that closing the mortgage with First Title was important because that company "can be relied upon not to jeopardize the buyer's loan application through improper disclosures to the lender, either on the HUD-1 or otherwise."
First Title did not reply to a request for comment.
Why keep a lender in the dark about the source of a buyer's down payment? Is it to make loan applicants appear more financially qualified than they really are? Is it to make home sales go through that otherwise would not?
I asked Franklin Foundation for answers over a two-week period without a reply.
More recently, Scott Nash, representing Franklin Foundation, contacted me with this explanation: "The truth is," he said, "we do not have the answers to these questions."
Nor would Nash reveal how many loans had been closed with SNAP money, the names of the lenders or brokers involved, or the identities of the "multiple real estate attorneys nationally" who the SNAP Web site claimed had "reviewed and approved" the program. "For the time being, SNAP is being put on hold," he said.
That was good news to some large national mortgage lenders, who agreed that the lack of down payment cash - and the presence of a verified bank account deposit up to $50,000 in a loan application - might fool them into seriously misjudging the financial risk presented by a homebuyer.
Ken Preston, a spokesman for Countrywide Home Loans, a subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest independent residential mortgage lending firm, said "we do not knowingly participate" in programs like SNAP. But he conceded that it would be difficult to detect such loan applications in any event.
"I would fire anybody who participated in this," said Paul E. Skeens, a loan officer with Carteret Mortgage Corp., in Waldorf. "It's obvious that you are circumventing the rules."
But are lenders the only potential losers when buyers with no down payment cash get secret backdoor help? Hardly. The purchasers put themselves in jeopardy by trying to stretch their finances to buy a house they can't afford.
What happens if one of the two breadwinners loses a job? The endgame is foreclosure.
Ken Harney's e-mail address is kenharney@earthlink.net.
