Two mortgage programs will be introduced today that are intended to make it easier to purchase or rehabilitate Baltimore homes owned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

HUD will announce that for the next six months it is waiving its 3 percent down payment requirement and will allow qualified purchasers to buy a HUD home with $1,000 down after attending an approved homeowner counseling course.

In addition, it will allow those borrowers to finance closing costs by rolling them into their mortgage, further reducing out-of-pocket expenses.

The second program, the "Easy K" initiative, will help streamline HUD's 203(k) purchase-rehabilitation loan program for borrowers.

"These are two programs designed to encourage owner-occupants to buy HUD homes," said James Kelly, a spokesman in the federal agency's Baltimore office.

Kelly said 48 HUD homes are listed for sale in the city, significantly fewer than the number available two years ago when "it was in the range of 1,000 properties for sale," he said. He added that the majority of those homes went to investors and not to owner-occupants.

"Although they sell well, we want to increase the percentage bought by owner-occupants," Kelly said.

HUD and four partners - Tri-Churches Housing Inc., Development Corp. of Northwest Baltimore, Southeast Community Development Corp. and the Baltimore Urban League - will provide counseling for buyers.

"We are having them give a higher level of counseling, specifically to cover predatory lending and to cover the HUD home-buying process," Kelly said.

Over the next six months, HUD will market 50 homes under the "Easy K" rehab program that will ease the burden on purchasers. The program will absorb most of the paperwork costs typically associated with 203(k) loans for the renovation of a property in need of repair. Kelly said that could amount to several hundred dollars in savings for a buyer.

The 203(k) program allows buyers to borrow money for home repairs in the same loan used to purchase the property.

Borrowers using the 203(k) program usually must hire and pay a consultant and an appraiser to inspect the property and prepare the paperwork necessary to secure the loan.

Gwenyth Padow, director of homebuyer education at Tri-Churches, said the two programs will make it easier for renters to become homeowners. "In most cases, they'll be able to find that they can pay a mortgage. This is incentive for them to be on a faster track to be homeowners," she said.