Erik and Crystal Swanson got their Dundalk row house last year using Maryland?s “More House 4 Less” reduced-rate mortgage program, and Terri Richardson got her Prince George?s home back with the help of a state investigator after she got scammed out of it by a deceptive subprime lender.
In front of the Swansons? home Wednesday, Gov. Martin O?Malley announced a statewide initiative called Home Owners Preserving Equity to protect more homeowners from deceptive subprime lenders. HOPE includes $111 million in commitments from private lenders for refinancing. The governor is also setting up a Homeownership Preservation Task Force.
“The family home is the building block of a stronger, growing middle class,” O?Malley said. “A lot of times, people feel it?s something that they?ve failed, that they didn?t read the 42 pages of small print.”
The Swansons are paying 5.75 percent interest on their $146,000 house in a continuing state program to help first-time home buyers. But Erik Swanson said he and his wife only qualified for the program after their child was born. Others are not so lucky.
Terri Richardson said she lost her Oxon Hill home after she sought to refinance to do home improvement, but instead of refinancing, she actually wound up selling the property to a lender and paying rent to stay in her house.
“I was trying to get help and no one helped,” Richardson said. Then she found Calvin Wink, an investigator in the division of financial regulation of the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.
Wink got involved and helped her get back her home. DOLLR Secretary Tom Perez said he would add four more investigators to the 16-person unit.
In 2006, Maryland was 40th in the nation in home foreclosures, but foreclosures have gone up so rapidly that “we?re now 22nd” in the nation in the rate of people losing their homes for failure to pay their escalating mortgages, Perez said.
Housing Secretary Raymond Skinner said the “proactive” HOPE program includes refinancing, mortgage insurance, incentives and home ownership counseling “to make sure Maryland families can preserve the equity they have built up in their homes.”
