By Daniel Sansary<\/p>\n
The barrier to a first home isn\u2019t credit anymore. It\u2019s cash. And the fix is closer than most families think.<\/p>\n
A working family can fix their credit, hold down two jobs, budget to the cent and still not be able to buy a home. Not because they can\u2019t make the monthly payment but because they can\u2019t get to the closing table. The down payment and closing costs \u2014 tens of thousands of dollars due all at once \u2014 have become the wall between renting and homeownership.<\/p>\n
I see it every day at Neighborhood Housing Services of Greater Berks, and I know from the nearly 250 organizations in the NeighborWorks\u00ae network I am part of that Reading is not alone. Across the country, the same shift is underway: for a growing number of families, the biggest barrier to homeownership is no longer credit. It\u2019s cash.<\/p>\n
The numbers around us tell the story. In Berks County, the average home now runs close to $297,000, and even Reading\u2019s more affordable market sits around $244,000. For a family that has done everything right, a market moving that fast can feel like chasing a bus that never stops.<\/p>\n
At NHS Greater Berks, we have spent decades building a model for exactly this moment, and it rests on two things working together: money and knowledge. We serve families across all 67 counties in Pennsylvania, with Berks at the heart of our work.<\/p>\n
Through our own lending programs, we help families cover down payment and closing costs directly, so a lack of upfront cash no longer ends the conversation. On the knowledge side, we sit with people through housing counseling and homebuyer education before they sign anything, so they understand the decision they are about to make and are ready to keep the home once they have it. Since 2017, that combination has produced more than 2,000 loans and one-on-one counseling for over 3,400 families.<\/p>\n
That second part matters more than it sounds. A down payment gets a family into a house. Counseling is what helps them stay.<\/p>\n
Here is the part too few people know: significant help exists, and much of it is free. The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, which serves as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development intermediary for organizations like ours, offers first-time buyers access to down payment and closing-cost assistance, some of it forgivable.<\/p>\n
These programs require a homebuyer education course, and that is exactly where we come in: NHS Greater Berks provides that counseling and education at no cost to the family. The state programs and the local guidance are designed to work together.<\/p>\n
The catch is that a family must be aware that these assistance programs exist, and they should walk through the right one in the right order. That is one of the most common reasons people give up too early. They assume homeownership is out of reach and stop asking.<\/p>\n
My advice to anyone in Pennsylvania wondering whether they will ever own a home is simple: don\u2019t try to buy a home alone, and ask for help before you think you need it. A conversation with a local housing counselor early on can be the difference between another year of renting and a set of keys to a home you own.<\/p>\n
Last year, NeighborWorks America and its network of nearly 250 organizations counseled and educated 102,927 households on housing and financial capability, helped create 17,572 new homeowners, and generated more than $11.6 billion in total investment in communities across every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n
\u201cHousing counseling and homebuyer education are central to both our mission and our legacy,\u201d says Alicia McCoy, NeighborWorks America\u2019s Interim Vice President for National Homeownership Programs and Lending. The scale is real, but the work only happens at one kitchen table at a time, in places like Reading and other Pennsylvania communities.<\/p>\n
The affordability gap in Pennsylvania won\u2019t close on its own. But for the family thinking about buying a home, doing the math and coming up short, the message is different, and it is true: the barrier in front of you is lower than it looks, and you do not have to clear it by yourself.<\/p>\n
Daniel Sansary is executive director of Neighborhood Housing Services of Greater Berks, a NeighborWorks network organization based in Reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Daniel Sansary The barrier to a first home isn\u2019t credit anymore. It\u2019s cash. And the fix is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1559,56385,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-249580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columinists","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}