Loan Counseling Service
Why does NJCA provide a Loan Counseling Service for Home Ownership and Home Improvement?
One of the issues that NJCA is working on is fair banking. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is a federal law that requires banks to give money back to the communities from which they make their profits. This law prevents redlining and discrimination.
NJCA has signed agreements using the Community Reinvestment Act that require banks to provide below market interest rate mortgages and home improvement loans to the low and moderate income borrowers in New Jersey.
NJCA’s Loan Counseling Service assists people who wish to get a below market rate mortgage or home improvement loan by counseling them and referring them to banks that participate in our program. In the sections directly below, you will find more specific information on our services for home ownership and home improvement, plus the necessary application form(s) in English & Español.
NJCA's Loan Counseling Service in The New York Times
New! On February 17, 2008, The New York Times's coverage of the mortgage crisis featured NJCA's loan counseling service:
Someone to Speak for Borrowers in Trouble
By Kareem Fahim
NEWARK — As she leafed through her client's mortgage papers, the housing loan counselor just shook her head.
The numbers and interest rates and payment schedules formed such a familiar, dispiriting picture. The 32-year-old man who was sitting across the desk from her said he had been persuaded to take out an adjustable rate mortgage called an option ARM when he bought his home, the first he has owned. The terms of the loan put him in danger of joining millions of people dragged under by the mortgage crisis that has washed through towns and cities across the country....
The loan counselor, Judy Brzuskiewicz of New Jersey Citizen Action, a nonprofit advocacy group in Newark, picked up the phone. She called the lender, Countrywide Financial, and told the representative that her client still had good credit and needed the 9 percent interest rate on his mortgage lowered, maybe to 6 percent. Politely but insistently, she said the adjustable rate needed to be frozen.
"I'm counting on you," she told the representative, who told her that he fielded calls like hers all day long.
Day after day, Ms. Brzuskiewicz and counselors like her across the country keep making the same calls, trying to stand between homeowners who took out loans they say that they did not comprehend, or could not afford, and foreclosure.... Read the complete news article.
Learn more about NJCA's Free Tax Preparation (y en Español), and our Insurance, Banking and Community Reinvestment Campaign.
Application Forms (English & Español)
This section includes links to all application forms
If you are interested in NJCA's Loan Counseling Service, please take a moment to review and fill out the following. NEW! All four Loan Counseling Service Applications in English can now be filled out and submitted entirely online; or you can print and then mail or fax the completed form to us. You will be asked, as the first question, which Loan Counseling Service you are applying for. PLEASE NOTE that our Spanish-language application forms still need to be submitted in the traditional way: copied and pasted into a new document, then completed and emailed, faxed, or postal-mailed back to us (full instructions included with each form).
Here is our general Loan Counseling Service application, available in both English and Spanish:
- Reverse Mortgage Counseling Service Application
- Aplicación De Servicio De Asesoramiento De Préstamos Reversos
Your application will be forwarded to a Loan Counselor as soon as we receive it. You should receive a call back from your counselor in two or three weeks. Crisis counseling applicants will be contacted within 48 hours of receipt of your application. We look forward to working with you and hope that you will soon join the thousands of successful NJCA homeowners!
For more information, please e-mail questions to our Intake Coordinator at application@njcitizenaction.org.
Home Ownership Loan Counseling
- Can you afford to own your own home?
- What’s the right mortgage for you?
- Which mortgages really cost less?
- How can you clean up your credit?
We can help you find the answers — learn more below or contact us.
Home Ownership Loan Counseling Service Applications (English & Español)
All four of our Loan Counseling Service applications can now be filled out and submitted entirely online; or you can print it and either mail or fax it to us. The first question asks which type of Loan Counseling Service you are interested in.
- Loan Counseling Service application
- Aplicación de Asesoramiento en Español
- Reverse Mortgage Counseling Service application
- Aplicación De Servicio De Asesoramiento De Préstamos Reversos
- Loan Crisis Counseling Service application – for Defaulted Mortgages, Foreclosures, Crisis and Predatory Workout Counseling
- NJCA's Home Improvement Counseling Service Application
If you are interested in NJCA's Loan Counseling Service, please take a moment to review and fill out the appropriate application(s) (English or Español). All applicants must complete their own application.
We provide:
Assistance in working out your own personal long or short term plan for resolving credit problems - Extended counseling to eliminate bad credit problems
- Guidance in preparing a budget
- Information and preparation for home ownership
- Prequalification services that let you know how much of a house you can really afford
- Specially discounted mortgages for first time homebuyers
Counseling Centers
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Sponsors
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Home Improvement Loan Counseling
- How can you make sure that your contractor is reputable?
- What home improvement loan is right for you?
- Which loans really cost less?
- How can you clean up your credit?
- We can help you find the answers — learn more below or contact us
- For your reference, here is a complete list of all Loan Counseling Service Applications in both English & Español
Home Improvement Loan Counseling Service Application
This application can now be filled out and submitted entirely online; or you can print it and either mail or fax it to us.
We'll show you:
How to repair your credit - How to set up a personal budget you and your family can live with
- How much equity is available in your house
- How to find the right home improvement loan at a discounted interest rate
- How to understand your financing in order to avoid paying excessive fees and interest
Counseling Centers
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Sponsors
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Contact Us
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us:
- E-mail our Intake Coordinator: application@njcitizenaction.org
- Phone: toll free 1-800-NJ OWNER (1-800-656-9637)
- Fax: 973-643-8100
- Postal Mail:
New Jersey Citizen Action Loan Counseling Service
744 Broad Street, Suite 2080
Newark, NJ 07102