HomeStreet Bank, a Seattle-based bank, has only had a presence in the Tri-Cities’ market for about a year, but it’s already demonstrating how it does business differently.

[blockquote quote="This program helps employers help their employees improve their lives." source="Andy Slipper, vice president of HomeStreet Bank" align="right" max_width="300px"]

Through the company’s Hometown Home Loan program, employees of participating businesses pay reduced fees for home loan mortgages and are offered special finance and money management classes.

And participating employers don’t even have to be bank customers.

“We have about 185 employers that participate in the program,” Andy Slipper said.

The bulk of those are in the Seattle, Portland and Spokane markets. But since HomeStreet began offering the program in the Tri-Cities’ market about a year ago, eight employers have started participating, including Lourdes Healthcare, Tri-Cities Community Health and Red Lion Hotels.

“This program helps employers help their employees improve their lives,” Slipper said.

Employees who are homeowners are more stable, which provides a benefit to the employer. And employers who offer the program can use it as a tool to recruit employees, as well.

The program provides reductions in the fees for home loans and refinancing, he explained.

Some fees associated with refinancing or home loan mortgages are set in stone, like title fees or some compliance fees, but some of the other closing costs can be reduced.

Those reduced fees often enable borrowers to purchase a home much sooner that they might otherwise be able to, Slipper said.

HomeStreet’s Hometown Home Loan program was originally developed by the bank with the City of Seattle in 1994 to help police and fire department employees qualify to purchase homes in the neighborhoods near where they worked. The goal was to improve emergency response times in the event of a natural disaster.

The program was so successful that it was expanded to include other companies and organizations in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii.

In October, the Hometown Home Loan program received a national award for community reinvestment from the American Bankers Association.

The program offers those who participate reduced loan fees and closing costs and free homeownership and money management education.

“There is no cost to the employer,” said Slipper, who is based in Spokane.

Slipper said the bank offers participating employers a curriculum of hour-long financial fitness classes that can be done at the work site in a ‘lunch and learn’ setting. These classes include topics from the basics of understanding credit, to protecting your identity to first-time homebuyer education.

Through the program, HomeStreet also offers monthly, off-site classes that are about five hours long that are intended for homebuyer education.

“These courses are done using the curriculum of the Washington State Housing Finance Commission,” Slipper said.

Participants who complete those courses may be eligible for down payment assistance, he added.

And there’s a third component of the training that some may find invaluable.

“We have an affiliation with American Financial Solutions, a division of the North Seattle Community Foundation, which is a well-vetted credit counseling organization,” Slipper said. “They are putting resources into having counseling information for how people can address student loan issues and they have some special resources to help people navigate that.”

Slipper said it’s also important to note that when employees use the program to buy or refinance a home, that loan likely won’t get sold to another lender thousands of miles away.

“We service nearly all our home loans that we originate,” he said.

In addition, HomeStreet Bank runs the program using salaried employees, not people who are paid through commission.

“We want people to know that our best intentions are at heart and it’s important for everyone to know that our loan processors and originators are in-house,” he said.

For more information about the program or becoming a participating employer, contact Andy Slipper by calling 509-252-6032 or by email andy.slipper@homestreet.com or go to www.homestreet.com/hometown.