SAVE plan injunction deflates Hastings couple’s homebuying dreams

Henry Yandrasits thought he did everything right to make the biggest purchase of his life.

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A master’s degree from Gallaudet University led to a successful career as a sign language interpreter. He has excellent credit, he said, and no credit card debt. And though he took out hefty federal loans to finance his education, he said he never missed a payment on the roughly $86,000 in student debt he’s incurred.

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So Yandrasits and his partner, Sadi Dudley, were pleased when they got preapproved in April for a $300,000 mortgage to finance their first home. But when the couple told their loan officer in early December that they wanted to make an offer on a three-bedroom house in Hastings listed under budget at $294,000, their path to homeownership came to an abrupt halt.

Their monthly student loan payments appeared to have surged. That curdled their chances of getting preapproved for a mortgage from Bell Bank Mortgage, their loan officer told them in an email shared with the Minnesota Star Tribune.

But their debt hadn’t actually deepened. The real obstacle hampering their homeownership dreams? A battle over a Biden administration student loan repayment plan, waged at the highest levels of government and out of their control.

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The federal plan was supposed to unburden millions of people mired in student debt.

The SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education) plan launched in August 2023. A Biden-Harris administration initiative, the student loan repayment program would lower monthly payments for many borrowers and reduce the amount of time it takes to receive loan forgiveness.

Yandrasits and Dudley, who also attended Gallaudet and has about $100,000 in student debt, swiftly enrolled in the SAVE plan, set to replace their previous Obama-era repayment program.