Fahe and Fannie Mae Partnership is Increasing Access to Housing in Appalachia
Fahe is partnering with Fannie Mae to provide persistent poverty communities with greater access to affordable mortgage products that allow families to achieve the American Dream of homeownership. One of Fahe’s greatest contributions to our communities is our ability to forge public/private partnerships that help national partners like Fannie Mae meet their mission in some of the hardest to serve areas of the country. We are able to do so through utilizing our deep reaching platform of local leaders who are on the ground in these hard to serve areas. This allows National partners like Fannie Mae to bring their capacity to our Network’s local service areas and provide opportunity where it is needed most in our communities.
Penny and Kirk Fredrick are the first family to be served by the new partnership. Penny works at Chick-Fil-A and in her spare time she coaches children’s soccer. The Richmond, KY couple are also getting ready to celebrate their 34th wedding anniversary. As they grow older, they are becoming more concerned with the accessibility of their house and the amount of money they are able to save for retirement. They recently decided it was a good time to refinance their home with JustChoice Lending (JCL), Fahe’s mortgage division. Thanks to this new partnership between Fahe and Fannie Mae, they were able to do so in a way that made a lot of impact for the couple.
“Thanks to JustChoice Lending, we were able to refinance our home at half a percent lower,” said Penny. “We were also able to take an equity loan that let us pay off some debt and also fix up our house.” Penny went on to express that she never expected to receive such a dramatic increase in savings on her monthly payments, but she was happy to receive it knowing it would help her and her husband in the future.
“The partnership between Fannie Mae and Fahe gives organizations like Fahe access to more affordable products to lend in communities that wouldn’t necessarily have access to a diverse array of products,” said Janel Lawson, Fahe’s Vice President of Single Lending. “Furthermore, Fannie Mae’s approval provides access to make mortgages directly which allows Fahe to be more competitive on rates. In addition, this allows our organization to be recognized in a way that helps facilitate greater conversation with potential donors.”
While Fahe’s core service area is in Appalachia, JCL is actually licensed in 17 states. Thanks to our broker network, we are able to serve many households which would not have been served without our connection to their communities. Our partnership with Fannie Mae will provide the opportunity to allow us to serve even more families in even more impactful ways.
“But it’s not the half percent that really matters to me. It’s nice for sure, but the staff at JustChoice made us feel welcome and appreciated,” said Penny. “We’ve dealt with banks before and they left us feeling overextended and left in the dark. I never felt this way once with JCL.”
Our new partnership with Fannie Mae is a win for our communities because of the increased access to great products, a win for Fannie Mae because they are able to utilize the partnership with Fahe to effectively reach communities that need it most, and a win for Fahe because we are able to access greater sources of funding and expertise from a trusted and well-established partner in Fannie Mae.