Christmas came a little earlier for Jim and Mary Cooper than it did for most other people last month. Their three children, too.

They were the first members of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma to take advantage of an innovative mortgage assistance program that allows Native American families to purchase homes with as little as 1 percent of the purchase price from their own funds. But it wasn't a federal handout.

On the contrary, the Cherokee initiative is just the latest expansion of a year-old, private sector collaborative to help Native Americans who might otherwise be precluded from obtaining affordable financing to buy, rehabilitate or refinance their homes because their incomes are above that allowed for government-backed funding.

The Oklahoma Indian Nations mortgage program is the first to take advantage of money available under the 1996 Native American Assistance and Self-Determination Act, which was created to promote affordable housing opportunities on and off Native American lands.

The Cherokee tribe is the fourth to sign up for the program, which gives their members access to financing with just a 3 percent downpayment. It also permits borrowers to put up just a third of the downpayment from their own cash, with the balance coming from a revolving loan fund stocked by the proceeds from the sale of homes offered by the various nations.

The mortgage assistance plan allows the Housing Authority of the Cherokee Nation "to offer home ownership opportunities to Tribal members without them having to spend time on our waiting list," said Executive Director David Southerland. The housing authority also will be able to assist a group of tribal members it has never been able to assist before, "those who are over the HUD income guidelines."

By taking advantage of the low-downpayment option, the Coopers needed less than $900 of their own savings to purchase a five-bedroom, three-bath house in Bartlesville for $89,900. "This has been like a holiday miracle for my family," said Jim Cooper, a self-employed truck driver.

The Cooper's financing package included a 97 percent, 30-year fixed mortgage at 7.875 percent from First Americans Mortgage Corp., a Native American lending and consulting company dedicated to supplying first Americans with quality, safe and affordable homes. The Coopers also obtained a 1.9 percent, five-year second mortgage from their tribe's housing authority to cover the rest of the downpayment and their closing costs.

The first mortgage was insured by PMI Mortgage Insurance of San Francisco, funded by Washington Mutual, a Seattle-based financial services company, and purchased by Freddie Mac, a federally-chartered, stockholder-owned enterprise created by Congress to create a continuous flow of capital to primary lenders.

Headquartered in Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation is the country's second largest Native American tribe with about 210,000 members. The other three nations are the Choctaw, the third largest tribe with some 110,000 members, the Chickasaw and the Potawatomi.

In total, the collaborative will help about 700 tribesmen buy, fix-up or refinance their homes.

Published: January 10, 2000

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When Lew Sichelman first started writing about housing in 1969, he was the youngest real estate writer in the country. Now, 37 years later, he's one of the oldest -- and most decorated. He has been rated the top housing columnist in the country by the National Association of Realtors as well as by his peers in the National Association of Real Estate Editors. Indeed, NAREE has recognized his work on numerous occasions. One year - due to his advancing age, he can't recall which one - he earned top honors in the annual NAREE Journalism Contest in three out of the four major writing categories. It was the first time one writer has won so many NAREE awards in a single year. Known for his ability to make even the most difficult topics understandable, Sichelman also has been honored by the National Association of Home Builders and the Mortgage Bankers Association. He began providing in-depth coverage of and consumer-oriented information about housing and housing finance at the Washington Daily News, where he was real estate editor. He held that same position for nine more years at the Washington Star, which purchased the News in 1972. The Star, a so-called "writer's newspaper" which also had the misfortune of being an evening paper, was put out of its misery in 1981, and Sichelman, who had begun self-syndicating his column in 1978, decided to become a full-time columnist. Today, his column, "The Housing Scene," is distributed by United Media to newspapers throughout the country. He also is on the staff of National Mortgage News, an independent newspaper which is considered the bible of the mortgage business. And he writes for numerous other publications, including MarketWatch.com, where he answers readers questions once a week, Sports Illustrated (don't ask), RealtyTimes.com, BigBuilder and others. Sichelman is married, the father of five and grandfather of eleven.