Chicago Tribune Mary Ellen Podmolik column [Chicago Tribune]

Aug. 27--With its 2-year-old Walk Score product already used by more than 4,000 realty Web sites, Seattle-based software company Front Seat has expanded its data options so Chicago homebuyers can see whether a potential neighborhood is public transit-friendly as well as walkable.

Earlier this month, Front Seat rolled out two new features, Transit Score and a "commute" tab that lets the user gauge how long (in distance and time) it would take to get from point A to B in Chicago. It even shows the changes in elevation between the departure and destination points, which may be a bigger issue in, say, Denver than in Chicago.

The expansion is part of Front Seat's mission to encourage homebuyers to think about just how "green" a home may be. "The location of a home has a much bigger impact on how sustainable that home is than how energy efficient it is," said Matt Lerner, Front Seat's chief technical officer. "You can have the greenest home in the neighborhood but if you have to drive 20 miles for groceries, you're not that green."

For the time being, though, homebuyers are out of luck if they want to check out the transit score of a property beyond the city's borders. Punching in a suburban Chicago address does list various public transit options and commuting information but there's no scoring. That's because Metra and Pace do not provide their transit information in a format usable by Front Seat's programmers, Lerner said. Once the information becomes available, suburban transit scores will be added.

ZipRealty is the first national company to incorporate the transit scores, but consumers also can go directly to Walkscore's Web site to type in a Chicago address and see how it rates.

Plugging in the address of Tribune Tower, at 435 N. Michigan Ave., generated scores that labeled it a walker and transit rider's paradise. I'd concur, unless you happen to be trying to get across the Michigan Avenue bridge when it's raised for sailboats or when a movie such as "Transformers 3" is filmed outside the front door.

Last-minute credit check. As part of its effort to ensure that the mortgages it insures are ones that are going to get repaid, Fannie Mae is talking again to lenders about borrowers' "undisclosed liabilities."

Back in February, Fannie Mae warned lenders that they better make sure borrowers look as good on paper right before they close on a mortgage as when they applied for it. The directive from the government-sponsored enterprise seemed to indicate that for loans written on or after June 1, lenders would need to pull another credit report on borrowers just before closing.

Earlier this month, Fannie Mae said lenders wrongly reinterpreted its directive. Its guidance now states that lenders only have to put a loan through underwriting again if new facts send the debt-to-income ratio higher by 3 percentage points or more, or it rises above 45 percent.

"The lender's still responsible and the borrower is responsible as well to disclose any changes," said Howard Ackerman, senior vice president of Fifth Third Bank in Chicago.

How's a lender likely to determine that? By pulling another credit report, said Kathe Doremus, a vice president at Inland Bank and Trust. Any change may delay a closing while unusual activity is checked.

Smart loan officers already warn homebuyers seeking to pre-qualify for a loan not to apply for additional store or major credit cards, not to lease a car during the process and not to start charging purchases for a new home until the ink has dried on the mortgage. Savvy consumers should really listen to that advice now.

"Some investors are specifically saying you need to pull a credit report," Doremus said. "Others are saying they'll do it before they buy the loan from us and if there's a problem, they'll push (the loan) back to us. If they have spotless credit and low debt-to-income, who cares if they buy a new couch," Doremus said. "The problem is the mechanics of it. You've still got to go for the underwriting."

mepodmolik@tribune.com

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