The third obstacle is affordability assistance. Banks look at your income and credit score and qualify you for a loan of a certain amount. Depending on the market you want to buy a home in, there may or may not be homes that are priced appropriately for your first mortgage. Let’s say you qualify for $200,000 as a first mortgage. In some communities, you can buy a home for $200,000, but in other neighborhoods and communities, the median home value is $350,000 or more.
There is an affordability gap between what you can afford for your monthly mortgage payment and the housing prices in your community.
We have several different initiatives focused on reducing racial inequality. One of them is a program we run in partnership with Minnesota Housing, the Home Ownership Opportunity Alliance, which is about bringing together mortgage lenders, real estate agents and real estate consultants to centralize the elimination of racial inequality to create more equitable business policies.
We understand the importance of representation and cultural responsiveness to the needs of different communities. Our network of real estate consultants offers services in many different languages, including English, Spanish, Somali and others.
We also try to work with all of our partners to create targeted down payment resources. The first generation down payment is specifically geared towards people who don’t own their own home and whose parents don’t own a home or lost it to foreclosure.
The Black Homeownership Special Loan Program, designed to work in partnership with First Generation Down Payment Assistance, allows us to go even deeper and recognize some of the past harms that have specifically affected Black households.
