Nonprofit CRF Helps Twin Cities Sell Foreclosed Properties

""Community Reinvestment Fund, USA"":http://www.crfusa.com (CRF), a national organization that provides capital to nonprofit community development lenders through its secondary market for loans, recently announced a new foreclosure remediation program for the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.
The program - dubbed the Sustainable Home Ownership Program (SHOP) - is available to home buyers in Minneapolis/St. Paul, who are interested in purchasing distressed properties out of foreclosure. The nonprofit CRF says it is helping make this initiative possible by providing ""high-touch, one-on-one loan servicing"":http://www.crfusa.com/productsandservices/Services/Pages/LoanServicing.aspx to SHOP borrowers.
The Twin Cities' SHOP program allows local housing agencies to target, acquire, and rehabilitate foreclosed properties, and then sell them to qualified borrowers on a contract-for-deed basis. CRF explains that the program is unique because it increases the number of potential home buyers by expanding financing options, while allowing borrowers to ""bridge"" to a conventional or Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage product when they reach a financial position to do so.
According to CRF, many state housing agencies throughout the country are considering similar programs under the U.S. government’s ""Neighborhood Stabilization Program"":http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/communitydevelopment/programs/neighborhoodspg/, but the organization says they are having trouble finding a qualified, capable servicer who is willing to participate in localized state- and community-based efforts to alleviate their swollen inventories of vacant, foreclosed properties.
As a community development pioneer for more than 20 years, CRF has a legacy of connecting with local lenders and helping its partners do more with less money, relying on private capital rather than public financing, the nonprofit explained. CRF also has a history of helping mortgage lenders with foreclosure remediation, working with Fannie Mae, Habitat for Humanity, and the City of Minneapolis to create the ""Home to Stay"" program in 2001 that helped victims of a property-flipping scam that targeted one of the city's low-income neighborhoods.
CRF, an active Fannie Mae-approved servicer, said it specializes in small, customized loan servicing assignments for non-traditional portfolios - such as the SHOP program - that are often turned down by conventional servicers. According to CRF, SHOP's novel approach to alleviating the effects of the home mortgage crisis can be successfully applied in states across the country.