Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Creating Ownership and Economic Opportunity

Personal tools
Impact

Secondary Market

$4.57 billion loaned to
50,808 homeowners

 
You are here: Home → Secondary Market
Self-Help Secondary Market
Image

Self-Help Secondary Market

Self-Help Secondary Market, North Carolina, Fannie Mae, Ford Foundation, affordable mortgage loans, lenders, low and moderate income borrowers

The mission of Self-Help is to create and protect ownership and economic opportunity for people of color, women, rural residents and low-wealth families and communities. The secondary market program supports our mission by providing lenders with liquidity to lend to low-and-moderate-income borrowers. Self-Help offers an alternative credit enhancement for banks looking to sell loans to Fannie Mae. Self-Help’s saleable, no-MI loan product is simple and easy for lenders to work with, while providing borrowers a lower mortgage payment than other saleable financing choices.

The Self-Help Loan Product

Self-Help Borrower Profile

  • Average Area Median Income: 62%
  • Minority: 40%
  • Female-headed households: 42%
  • Rural community residents: 13%

Self-Help loans have the following features:

  • No Mortgage Insurance
  • Purchase money and limited cash-out refinance
  • Saleable
  • CRA qualifying, targeted at low- and moderate-income borrowers
  • Similar to Fannie Mae’s “My Community Mortgage”
  • 30-year fixed rate
  • 100% LTV/103% CLTV
  • Eligible for Desktop Underwriter or Manual underwrite

Self-Help Programs: Flow and Portfolio

Lenders may sell new originations to Self-Help through our flow program, an outlet for conforming loans without mortgage insurance. This relationship assures lenders of a ready buyer for all new originations made to low- and moderate-income borrowers under our program.

For lenders already holding non-conforming loans, Self-Help offers a portfolio program through which we purchase selected loans based on our underwriting guidelines.

Requirements

To partner with Self-Help, the following criteria should be met:

  • Fannie Mae seller/servicer
  • Retail originations
  • Borrower income at or below 80% of area median income (AMI) or 115% AMI in low and moderate income or minority census tracts. Fannie Mae’s Property GeoCoder can identify if a borrower qualifies.
  • Lenders retain servicing rights, earning the standard servicing fee of 25 basis points.

Where Self-Help fits in

Self-Help gives lenders more flexibility by providing a saleable, no-MI product that is CRA-qualifying and serves low-and-moderate income markets.

Program History and Results

Since its founding in 1994, the secondary market program has purchased more than $4.5 billion in affordable mortgage loans, helping more than 50,000 families.

In 1994, the Ford Foundation awarded to Self-Help its largest domestic grant to date when it committed $50 million to provide risk capital for the program. Under this groundbreaking partnership with the Ford Foundation and Fannie Mae, Self-Help has expanded the secondary market program to serve low-income borrowers in 48 states around the nation.

Our Role in the Marketplace

Our Role in the MarketplaceLender originates loan to low-and-moderate income borrower

Participating Lenders sell these loans to Self-Help, either through the

portfolio or

flow program. Private mortgage insurance is unnecessary for Self-Help loans because Self-Help provides a credit enhancement.

Self-Help sells loans to Fannie Mae with Self-Help recourse.

Participating Lenders use the extra liquidity to continue lending in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

Fannie Mae pools the loans and sells them in the open market as mortgage-backed securities.

Investors receive payments on the securities.


* No MI     * Saleable     * CRA Qualifying     * 100% LTV
Document Actions