This is a Good Time for First Time Home Buyers!

First-time buyers can be in the money

MILWAUKEE – Nov. 8, 2007 – Caught in the shifting rapids of mortgage lending, Billy Alt and Kim Le are just now moving into the condo they thought they were buying in August.

The condo they were buying was in the process of being converted from a rental unit to a condo, and that involved some fancy financial footwork – the kind of transactional footnote that caused barely a blip until this summer’s upheaval in the mortgage market.

They quickly reorganized the finances of the deal to keep it on track.

“If we had been looking just a few weeks earlier, it would have been perfectly timed,” said Le.

While credit standards have clenched up, driving many too-lax lenders from the field, plenty of financiers are looking for customers, say home lenders.

“It’s a very good time for first-time buyers,” said Susan Wommack, national account manager with LoanSifter.com, an industry database business in Little Chute, Wis. “The lenders who are still standing are very competitive, and service levels have gone up, too.”