By Jon Greenberg on Tuesday, October 13, 2009.
A national panel has picked the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund to receive a five and half million dollar award. The Loan Fund has built a reputation for helping owners of mobile homes get mortgages just like conventional home owners. The award money will touch over a hundred households. New Hampshire Public Radio's Jon Greenberg has more.
Before the days of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, if you lived in a mobile or manufactured home park, there was pretty much no way that you could own the land your home sat on. As for the money you borrowed to buy your home itself, it was treated as a personal loan and came with a higher interest rate.
Julie Eades, the loan fund president, says more than 20 years ago, the fund began lending money so that park residents could own their land as a co-op. Then, seven years ago, they took the first steps to give individuals mortgages on their own manufactured homes. Eades says that innovation won them 5.5 million dollars from the Wachovia and MacArthur Foundations because it let owners tap into the broader benefits of homeownership.
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Julie Eades is the president of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund. The loan fund has been awarded 5.5 million dollars to provide conventional type mortgages to the owners of manufactured homes.
For New Hampshire Public Radio, I'm Jon Greenberg.
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