Money Advisor With hopeton morrison

Hi Mr. Morrison,

I am a young man seeking some advice on purchasing a home for me and my family. I am working $17,000.00 every two weeks. Please advise me on how to go about purchasing a home by mortgage due to my financial status.

- D.C.

Dear: D.C.

I am assuming that you qualify for National Housing Trust (NHT) benefits in which case I would recommend that this institution be your first financing option for the very simple reason that it offers the cheapest financing available. With weekly earnings of $8,500.00 you qualify for five per cent financing and a maximum loan from that institution of $1.75 million based on the information on the NHT's website. You are a young man so you should be able to access the maximum repayment of 30 years and that works out to a monthly mortgage of $11,158.00 which is approxi-mately one third of your monthly salary.

you have half the cost

With the price of houses these days that will be approximately half of the cost of the cheapest new homes that you can purchase in St. Catherine or say the Yallahs area of St. Thomas.

Some persons combine with their partner or some other family member to purchase a first home. Better than that you can buy an 'old house' for significantly less on the open market and fix it up. In any event it appears that you will need someone to undertake the other half of the mortgage to complete your purchase. Also of impor-tance you will need to deposit anywhere between 5-15 per cent before you can access financing and so you need to start saving for that right away.

Bear in mind that the NHT is your best but not your only option. Your next cheapest option is to access financing from the building societies and the credit unions.

Hopeton Morrison is general manager of St. Thomas Cooperative Credit Union Ltd. and lecturer in the School of Business Administration at the University of Technology. Please send comments and questions to: hmorrison@stccu.com.