Lenders import ways to extend mortgages to immigrants

Immigrants are increasingly getting the message: "Welcome to America. Now buy a house."

An immigrant with a scant credit history? Solvable. A family who wants to pool money to make a down payment? That's just fine. A borrower who is in the United States illegally? Not an insurmountable problem.

The federal government's policy is to raise the homeownership rate, and the most-efficient way to do that is to concentrate on minorities and immigrants. The white homeownership rate is almost 75 percent. A little less than half of black and Hispanic households own their homes, and the Asian rate is a bit higher than 50 percent.

For years, mortgage lenders have had programs for minorities, especially blacks, that involve relaxed credit standards and neighborhood outreach. Now those efforts are being tweaked and expanded for immigrants. There's a good reason for that: More than one in three new households are headed by immigrants, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. More than 1.2 million immigrants have arrived every year since 2000. Immigrants are where the housing growth is.

The nation's biggest mortgage lender, Countrywide, markets aggressively to immigrants. The California-based lender even sponsored a 13-episode home makeover show on Telemundo, a Spanish-language network based in Miami. In "Lo Dejo en Tus Manos" ("I'm Leaving It in Your Hands"), homeowners were given one-day renovations of part of the property -- a bathroom, kitchen, maybe the front yard. In one episode, Countrywide provided tips on how to qualify for a mortgage or home equity loan.

Education is key
"The major challenge when we're dealing with multicultural markets is the educational aspects," says Rodolfo Saenz, Countrywide's executive vice president of multicultural markets. Many immigrants don't know much about this country's banking system. "They don't really know what questions to ask, how to select the best product, what papers and questions will be part of the application," Saenz says.

Last year, Countrywide introduced its Optimum Loan program, under which borrower education is just one facet. Optimum combines disparate features of many loan products into one:

• allowing low or no down payment;
• supplementing the credit record with "nontraditional" credit;
• recognizing cash income, and rent from housemates;
• permitting the pooling of money for down payment and closing costs.

Mortgages with low or no down payments are relatively common nowadays. Optimum's three other features are relatively unusual. Take the nontraditional credit records. A lot of immigrants don't have extensive credit histories in the United States, both because they don't have many car loans and credit cards, and because they just haven't been in the country long enough to establish a track record.