Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America

Update from my previous (8÷24÷2014) review. I’m 6 months in my new home with a 2.75% fixed interest rate thanks to NACA! I had to walk away from the Fannie Mae home I was in contract for initially (even Fannie can be unscrupulous), but due to patience (mine, my NACA realtor, and my NACA counselor) I was able to get another contract just a few weeks later, and I closed on my new home just before Christmas 2014. With less than perfect credit (650 score) and no money saved (other than for prepaid taxes and insurance) I was able to purchase more house than I ever dreamed of or would have been able to afford with a conventional mortgage. My new house is just 3 years old and my mortgage is just $ 138 more than the rent I was paying (in the same neighborhood) but I have 2 additional ½ baths, 1 more bedroom, 2 car garage, a kitchen with granite countertops, Whirlpool Gold stainless steel appliances, storage galore, and get a tax deduction that benefits me approx $ 250/​month. I was able to buy-​down the NACA fixed 3.35% interest rate to 2.75% fixed with funds contributed by the seller towards closing — a unique feature of NACA loans. The more money contributed the lower you can buy your interest down, so either the more house you can purchase or the lower your fixed mortgage will be. Since I closed NACA has now introduced a new 15-​year fixed mortgage, so you have the choice of a 30-​year or 15-​year fixed mortgage. The process can be frustrating with NACA, but I’ve had conventional mortgages with Countrywide, Wells Fargo and Bank of America and the conventional process can be frustrating as well, but only NACA is MUCH less expensive and consumer-​friendly.

I posted this on NACA in CA Unilocal page. Wanted to post it on the DC since is closer to where I live. Although, you always speak through a counselor over the phone and you don’t really now where they are at.
This was the email I sent to «upper management» after working with NACA’s counselors for 7 months (May 2014 — December 2014):
Saludos (Good afternoon),
I wanted to thank both of you for the assistance you provided me during the 7 months my husband and I tried to purchase a house through NACA. We greatly appreciate your efforts.
It is unfortunate, that every single negative comment I received from various people about NACA came to be a reality. I know is not your fault directly, I guess it’s the system or the process NACA uses and the bad experience I encountered with the two counselors I spoke to. For these reasons, and a few more, my husband and I decided to obtain a mortgage through another lender instead of using NACA.
Today I spoke to a different counselor, unfortunately I don’t remember the counselor’s name, perhaps it might be in my NACA account history, but I was deeply offended due to comments he made. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand you have a standardized process; but, I think that comments like: «well, NACA doesn’t accommodate to you, you need to accommodate to NACA» are too harsh for a person who is suppose to offer excellent customer service. He only evaluated our case for 51 minutes which apparently was enough time for him to conclude that «we are lucky that we have a credit card to pay our bills because we are loosing all of our money every month spending more than we make». Personally I don’t think 51 minutes is a sufficient amount of time for anyone to make a conclusion of another person’s finances.
My husband and I are a very fiscally responsible couple employed by the federal government, extremely attentive to our finances. We were even told before during the Baltimore NACA seminar that we are more than qualified buyers. We always provided the necessary paper work in a more than a timely manner. We don’t have financial issues, we don’t have low credit scores (I know NACA doesn’t count this) and; furthermore, we haven’t had a late payment in our entire financial history (which I do know NACA really cares about).
It worries me to know that the counselors assisting our case, could not see that our debt to income level is below the minimum requirements, and that allotments from our biweekly pay is still income, and a way to organize our payments. The incompetency of the counselors is not only discouraging but frustrating. My husband and I were just trying to take advantage of NACA’s services to avoid down payment costs and PMI, but after 7 months of deliberately being neglected, personally insulted and spoken to in a condescending fashion, we decided the program is not worth our time.
I hope other people’s experience with NACA is better than ours.
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When my husband and I decided NACA’s program was not for us, we started searching other institutions until we found NASA Federal Credit Union. They were (and I believe still are) offering the same deal as NACA…100% financing and no PMI. The difference… the treat they give you its outstanding not like NACA’s where we were treated so badly. We were approved for a mortgage loan in just 3 days! We started searching for the perfect house for us and after 27 viewings we found it! We closed the deal in late-​May and moved-​in in June 2014 right after our daughter ended her school year. We’ve been living in our house for 8 months now and we are in love with it just like the first day we saw it.
I really hope NACA is working toward improving their program and their customer service and that is working for others despite our awful experience.

Naca is simply amazing. Here are the reasons why if your looking to purchase a home, you need to go with naca:
–Ability to buydown interest rate to: .125%(Bank of america) .0625%(Citi bank) — Yes you read these numbers correctly. Fraction of a percent!
–Always .5%-1% lower than FHA/​conventional loan
–No closing costs
–No down payment required
–No PMI payments… EVER
–Excellent credit NOT required
FHA is better than conventional for sure, but it still requires a 3 – 3.5% downpayment, you pay closing costs (unless the seller pays them), you still have to pay PMI (which is a joke) AND YOU CANNOT BUY YOUR INTEREST RATE DOWN LIKE NACA.
Point blank, FHA is garbage when it compares to NACA.
To all of the people who say naca is ‘not real’ ‘a scam’ or anything like that, you likely were not patient enough. The process requires an immense amount of patience. Yes, you will have to submit documents more than once, yes appointments will be canceled with little to no notice. Yes reaching your ‘counselor’ can be tough at times. and much much more. But when you have the ability to potentially save 100−300k over the course of 30 years going through this program… you would be a fool not to withstand those minor issues for a little bit.
The program is really made for poor to middle class income families… to get them from renting into owning a property. You get assigned a ‘Mortgage Consultant’. Depending on your finances/​employment/​history of previous short sales/​forclosures if any it can take anywhere from 1 month, to 2 years to get qualified for a loan. I would say if you have not had any loan issues in the past, had employment and rental history for 2+ years, and are persistent and organized, you can get qualified in approx 2 – 4 months.
There is literally so much more information that would be useful before going through the program, but its really not difficult. Literally anyone without a current loan can go through this program.
If you have a current loan and you wish to go through the program you can, you just have to sell your home and go rent somewhere in the meantime. Alot of people dont know this.
The last part I will write about is how the interest rate buydown program is simply amazing. It’s basically like getting a loan and barely paying any interest. So naca doesnt want you to put money into a ‘downpayment’ but rather use that money to lower your interest rate as much as possible. This will clearly save you much more money in the longrun. So say you have 20k saved. People who go FHA or conventional have to use that money for a downpayment and closing costs etc. With naca… you use that money to lower your interest rate. saves tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Works a little like this:
You can buy the interest rate down 7 points with your own money (1.75%) If you make under 100% median income of your area, the following apples:
You then put whatever money into principle you wish. The more money you put into principle… the lower your interest rate can further be reduced. For example. Today naca’s interest rate is 3.25%(Lower than anywhere by FAR) You can buy it down to 1.5%(This is already incredibly low) If you match that 7% you originally put into buying down the rate into direct principle of the home… the bank will match that contribution further reducing the interest rate from 1.5% to either .125(bank of america) .0625%(citi). The bank is determined by where you live. East of the Mississippi river is citi, west is BOA.
I could go on about this organization for days and days. It’s a shame many more people go FHA instead of Naca. FHA is garbage. If you went FHA, its not too late to go naca! Sell your home and go naca. Unless if your rich, you wont need to.
Feel free to message me if you want, I can tell you much much more if your interested.
Edit: 6 months in our home and I still cannot believe our interest rate. .0625% 30 years fixed. Everyone likes numbers, so here they were after 4 months:
Purchase price: 405k
Initial balance: $ 382,941
after 4 months: $ 378,725.10
Paid year to date: $ 7,536.12(Principle, interest, taxes, insurance)
interest: $ 91.82
Escrow: $ 3,228.40(Initial Escrow deposit was $ 1,726.04 for prepaid taxes/​insurance)
$ 91 of interest for FOUR months of payments on a 383k loan.
paid 25k~ to the bank to lower the rate from approx 3.25% to 1.5−1.75%(I forget). Then put 22k~ into principle of the loan which the bank matched dollar for dollar in further reducing the rate to the lowest rate allowed by law of ¹⁄₁₆^th of 1% which is 0.0625%. Had to bring $ 1700 to the table for initial escrow deposit.
So all in all had to come to the table with 49k~and only lost 25k of that to get a fraction of a percent interest rate.
Those numbers are INSANE. I repeat, they are INSANE!!! We are literally paying 3k~ interest over the next 30 years. Naca compared to a normal conventional loan savings is over 300k! I cannot describe the feeling I get when the mortgage bill comes in the mail.

This program is not what you think. It is the worst. I have been strung along since August 2013. No one has gotten back to me. They sent me an appointment. for counselor Charla Williams. She never followed up. I called her over 10 times with no call back. The I called member services and spoke to Debora and she was not willing to help or give me any answers when I asked her if I could make another appointment. She forwarded me to a Calvin Grier. Calvin Grier called me when I was «on the phone» with Debora. Does that make any sense??? NO!!! Instead of her transferring me to him, she says she doesn’t know his extension. Then you hear Calvin in the background saying, «Tell her I call her in a hour; I’M GOING TO LUNCH!!!» Debora relays the message to me and I ask her, «Can I talk to him, since he’s right there?» She says «No, he walked away.» NACA has a Circus full of liars and deceivers working for their customer service and payments center. Why are these people working if they don’t like helping people or like their job!!!

The loan product here is amazing, and can really be a legitimate option for folks who are looking for affordable home ownership options. Not all loan officers at NACA are made equal, «DJ» Djuro Mircetic Is the mortgage counselor that helped my client in may 2013 and is now helping me buy my first place. This product is great but takes alot of work, due diligence and attention to detail on the side of the borrower/​prospective homeowner. By no means is this easy or quick but if you have a good mortgage counselor and a good realtor helping you stay on track and give them everything they ask for as soon as they ask for it, you can buy a house for less money out of your pocket and less month than pretty much any other option out there. Important things to note are the max purchase price for the dc area is only $ 362,500(for single unit buildings) and your name can not be on the deed for any other property. All in all awesome, if you are willing to put in some work. I am happy to help or further explain the process.
****Update– I finally closed on my house at the end of march 2014. It took more that 15 months beginning to end to go from first meeting to getting into the house. And while they have increased the max loan amount for the dc area to $ 417k… I have lost years of my life to stress and unnecessary drama and bureaucracy while going through this process. The Biggest obstacle during the contract period was the «HAND» department. They were unresponsive and incompetent and almost cost me my deal, taking weeks to respond to things that could’ve been cleared up with a quick phone call. If you are familiar with how regular loan programs work, as I am, you know that business isn’t done like this, customer service is not the priority when dealing with Naca processing, you get a member ID number from the beginning and you just feel like a number by the end. My loan officer DJ is the best at the dc office and he did everything in his power to get my file through, I will be forever in his debt for all the hard work he put in for me, but, the best analogy I can make is having one good wheel on a semi-​truck doesn’t help the truck move any faster.
NACA is right for you if you get paid with w-2’s and have very straight forward income, if you have a year or more before you want to realistically be in a house, if you are patient and organized with all your financial information, and if you are looking for a house in a neighborhood that isn’t hot, because if you have a Naca contract in a bidding war… You’ve got pretty much zero chance.
All that being said, No PMI, no closing costs and below market interest rate all equals the absolute cheapest way to buy a house, but you’ve got to earn it!!!