Sonyma Mortgage Question

natiepie1028 Posted: Aug 08, 2005 09:27 AM

Sonyma Mortgage Question

Ok, we found a house we love and its a little more than we wanted to spend but its virtually maintenance free, but we wanted to stay under a certain price to be qualified for the Sonyma program. Last year when we prequalified, the price you had to stay under was 343,000. Does anyone know if the price changed since then since the price of houses has gone up???

If not, has anyone worked out a deal with the seller where you can pay the difference and then have the broker or bank think that we paid 343,000 or under??? Is that illegal to do? Because the house we bid on (and they accepted) was 349,000 and we were just thinking if we could pay them 6,000 cash and make it look like we agreed upon 343,000 so we can qualify for Sonyma. Those closing costs are so expensive and we would love for this program to help us out.

TIA!!!!

oneday Posted: Aug 08, 2005 09:53 AM

Re: Sonyma Mortgage Question

I'm not sure about the price but you can check the website here SONYMA
and find the program your looking at and I think it should tell you.
As far as your other question, I'm not sure if it's legal or not, but I'm not sure that a seller would really want to have to bother with that - but you never know. I guess maybe you could check with your laywer about that. But, I will tell you I went though SONYMA and they were very strict on all the guidelines so I would think it might be hard to do that. And I know some women on here (well, at least one) had a bad experience b/c at the last minute, they got rejected for the SONYMA program and had to come up with the closing costs afterall. We had originally been told we could probably qualify for one program, but then b/c of the way they calculated salary (a very stupid way, in my opinion) we had to go for the next one up - but we still were able to get the closing costs paid for which was awesome.
Good luck and if you have any other questions about it, I'd be more then happy to help- if I can!!!

DjPiLL Posted: Aug 08, 2005 11:46 AM

Re: Sonyma Mortgage Question

SONYMA will look at your contract to get the price of the house. Its highly unlikely the seller will want to lower the contract amount. Why would the seller want to bother with this? Lowering the contract amount means less protection for them. But i guess it doesnt hurt to ask.

MCDO15 Posted: Aug 08, 2005 12:01 PM

Re: Sonyma Mortgage Question

lower contract amount would = undisclosed amount of cash down which i guess could be worked out in another deal on the side... but it doesnt sound really good (not even sure if you could but sounds logical)

nov04LIbride Posted: Aug 08, 2005 04:32 PM

Re: Sonyma Mortgage Question

DO NOT TRUST THAT YOU WILL GET SONYMA! We at the time we purchased fit all their qualifications, as did our home, and we got turned down for no reason. They can choose whomever they want, and turn down anyone. Luckily we had the money and did not need them to pay the closing costs, because we would have been screwed if we didn't have that. Also, SONYMA took about 2 mos to let us know we got turned down. The buyers almost accepted another offer because we were taking so long. Where's the home?