The foreclosure auction scheduled for The Inn on Fairbank Street will be postponed, probably until April, according to mortgage lender North Middlesex Savings Bank. And, if the April auction price for the Inn covers the lender's outstanding loan (less than $248,829), Great Elms could escape the block altogether, at least for the near future.

The Inn and Great Elms, which together offer nine affordable, family-friendly apartments, share a single loan from the bank.

"Short term, the plan is for the current owners [Harvard Trust Non Profit Properties] to keep Great Elms, at least, we hope, until the state can help us replicate the units elsewhere [in town]," Selectman Ron Ricci told the Press on Tuesday.

Immediate foreclosure for The Inn and Great Elms was averted after the town's Municipal Affordable Housing Trust met with officials at the state Department of Housing and Community Development in early December and agreed to pay the mortgage until March and bear moving expenses for The Inn's remaining two tenants. Ricci said the housing trust has also accepted the DHCD offer to work with a state-funded consultant, identifying sites where replacement housing could be created.

"I will be talking with DHCD this week about it," Ricci said.

Meetings between the affordable housing trust and the Department of Housing and Community Development were arranged by Harvard resident Bonnie Heudorfer, a professional housing consultant who has worked on Harvard's state-mandated housing plan in the past.

Ricci, the Board of Selectmen's liaison to Harvard's Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, said Selectmen had not discussed lifting the affordable deed restriction on Great Elms, which it was empowered to do by a vote of Town Meeting in 2010.

A forbearance agreement, defining the terms under which the bank will postpone its right to foreclose, is firmly outlined, Ricci said. But details to be ironed out between the bank and the property owners, Harvard Trust Non Profit Properties, are yet to be finalized. Last month, Harvard Trust Non Profit Properties spokesman Victor Normand deferred comment to Ricci when asked to describe terms of the forbearance.