In the Door; First-Time Homebuyers Will Get Help Thanks to Laird's Bill.

Summary

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"The problem is," [John Laird] says, "in the over-heated housing market of Santa Cruz and Monterey County, that basically prices you out of the market. If you make $52,000 a year, you could not qualify for anything, even a townhouse or a mobile home."

"We'll have to see how it works in Monterey County, and if it's successful, we'll look into expanding it to the cities," Laird says.

"This legislation gives us a little more flexibility to tailor our first-time home-buyer programs to meet housing needs in our area," says Jim Cook, Monterey County's housing and redevelopment director. "Rather than using the old underwriting criteria or people putting 30 or 35 percent of their gross-monthly income towards housing expenses, now we can go up to 40 percent. So in essence, it reduces the gap that we would need to assist homebuyers in purchasing new homes, and it gives us the ability to leverage our funds and spread them a little bit further. It also brings us more in sync with underwriting practices in this high-cost housing area. It's a good move in the right direction."

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In the Door; First-Time Homebuyers Will Get Help Thanks to Laird's Bill.

More Monterey County residents will qualify for help buying a home because of a bill authored by Central Coast lawmaker John Laird, which Gov. Schwarzenegger recently signed into law...

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