I did a SONYMA loan with mine. You might make too much, the address to read up on it is nyhomes.com.
The SONYMA loan offers a real low interest rate, mine was 5.5& fixed, now they are under 5% I think. Also they offer a cash grant to pay for closing costs/downpayment.
The bank to go through is M&T bank. Only two banks in this area will do it, M&T and HSBC.
M&T Bank is great, you just need to be prepared to light a fire under their ass to get the loan pushed through, and be proactive about it. If you just expect them to do what they are supposed to do, it will sit on someones desk.
I got my house two years ago, so I got the interest free loan, not the free $8000 like you will get.
I got a grant for $5000 on top of this that was supposed to pay for closing costs. If your attorney is good like mine was, she spent like $4950 of that money. What they did was pay for everything… Attorney fee, title search, part of down payment, inspection, a year of homeowner insurance, and then they overloaded as much as they could into my escrow account.
So what happened a year later, when M&T reviewed my escrow, they cut me a check for $2000 for an overage.
The guy who did my loan is the manager of the loan department. He met with me, and did a really awesome job. He works downtown at the M&T. Basically they find ways to give you money, they gave me $200 to open a savings account with them. He told me to hold like 5 bucks in it, then close it in 90 days if you don’t want it.
They did a lot of other creative strategies so that I didn’t have to come out with money out of pocket. We did a 102% loan, and I ended up walking from the close with a check for about $1500 or so. I doubt they do this since the housing crisis hit.
I had the money to pay for close, but it was nice to have an extra 7500-9000 dollars in cash to upgrade the entire house, and put some in a nest egg for when something goes wrong.
The only thing I didn’t like was the inspector I chose, he had all the certifications, but he didn’t seem too sharp. He was paid $250 out of the grant money.
Adam, shoot me a PM if you want the name of the manager over at M&T, I’ll try to dig it up.