Denver resident Abraham Gonzalez’s aging parents will live in the home he bought two months ago in the Mexican town where he grew up.
The 30-year-old woodworker, a Mexican immigrant who has lived legally in Denver for seven years, bought the four-bedroom house in Aguascalientes without leaving Denver. He got a $35,000 mortgage loan – on which he will pay $330 a month – through Su Casita Mortgage, a cross-border lending operation that opened here three years ago.
“This is a very good idea,” said Gonzalez, who owns a home on Osceola Street where he lives with his wife and four young children. “My daughters and my son were born here, and my life is here, but I need to think about when I am an older person, and I want to help my parents now.”
Su Casita and another Denver mortgage broker, Dedicated Mortgage/re.Mex, are among a growing number of companies helping Mexicans living in the United States invest in their homeland.
The mortgage money is a small fraction of the $20 billion that Mexican nationals sent home from the U.S. in 2005.
Su Casita, which has offices throughout Mexico, and the other companies don’t require proof of legal residence from customers, instead asking that they show they have jobs and can pay a mortgage.
With national debate over illegal immigration at a fever pitch, there are those who would like to see the brokers check to ensure their customers are here legally.
“I have a heavy presumption against interfering with business transactions assuming people are legal, and (lenders) think that is an appropriate risk,” said former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm. “I would make people prove that they’re in the U.S legally.”
Lamm is a leader in a movement to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the state and is the sponsor of a proposed state constitutional amendment that would prohibit state and local government from providing services to illegal immigrants.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that between 225,000 and 275,000 unauthorized immigrants lived in Colorado in March 2005. Up to 178,000 of them are estimated to be in the workforce.
Gonzalez has paid attention as immigration legislation in Congress has sparked demonstrations by immigrants and their supporters, and counterdemonstrations by illegal-immigration foes.
“Everybody wants to have a better life,” he said. “I pay taxes; I am a good person. In this time it is very hard (for immigrants).”
He has no plans to move back to Mexico and said the home in Aguascalientes is an investment that will provide equity for his children.
Cross-border lenders have a strong appeal for Mexican workers who regularly send money to family members at home.
In 2005, Mexico received a record $20 billion from its nationals living here, money that is officially known as remittances, according to the Banco de Mexico. The amount has been growing steadily – in 2002 it broke $10 billion for the first time, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
Mexicans living here send $230 per worker per month on average to their communities, according to information provided by the Mexican consul in Denver.
Some want a home they can return to one day; others are looking for a property for parents or building equity for their children.
“Somebody would say, ‘I am making good money working construction; I’ll pay the bill from here,”‘ said Carlos Ramirez, owner of Dedicated Mortgage.
Businesses that help to finance homes in Mexico are growing in the U.S. Since 2003, Su Casita has opened offices in Dallas, New York and Chicago.
Last year, Mexican cement giant Cemex’s Construmex affiliate made cross-border loans that helped 2,000 Mexican families in the U.S. buy or remodel homes across the border, the company said. This year, Construmex expects to increase the number of loans to 5,000.
Su Casita makes about 20 loans a month in Denver and about 600 loans a year throughout the country, said Manuel Campos Spoor, the company’s vice president. The average mortgage is a little more than $35,000, and the mortgage rate on a 20-year, fixed-rate loan is 12 percent, said Campos.
Dedicated Mortgage arranges about 15 cross-border mortgages per month in Denver. Most of the homes are small, between 1,200 and 1,500 square feet, said Ramirez.
The loans are processed, funded in pesos and serviced in Mexico. A borrower in the United States who doesn’t want to travel to Mexico to complete the paperwork can sign over power of attorney to a relative. The borrower can pay in American dollars, which are transferred to Mexico at bank rates.
Ramirez began arranging the loans last year after a string of Latino customers asked if he could finance a home south of the border. At first, his office acted as an agent for Houston-based cross-border lender Conficasa. He later made arrangements for Dedicated to broker the deals on its own.
The business depends on word of mouth, said Su Casita’s Campos.
“The customers have to believe that this is something true, that they are not going to be taken for a wild ride and that they can achieve their goal.”
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
