Abundant educational and financial help available for locals
Think you’ll never be able to buy a house in the Vail Valley because you can’t come up with a down payment? You’re not alone. Pick up any local newspaper on any day and you’ll find an article on this ever present county wide issue. With the average price of a single family home at $535,350, many Eagle County residents are having a hard time figuring out a way to combine two of their life long dreams – to own a home and to live in the Vail Valley.
So if the average family in the county can afford to pay $253,000 for a home, how can locals bridge the gap between what’s out there and what they can wrap their wallets around? You may be surprise to find out there are many groups out there wanting to give you help – educational and financial. You just need to know who to ask.
Eagle County offers a wide variety of services to get you ready for the big adventure of buying a home. Get started by taking the free Home Buyers Class held at the Eagle County Building at 5:30 every month (see link to Eagle County Housing below for class schedule). Even if you’ve owned a home, this class is full of great information on repairing credit, the basic mortgage process, homeowner’s insurance and foreclosure prevention. p.s. – if you’re thinking of getting county down payment assistance, you have to take this class.
Don’t think your credit is good enough to buy a home? Eagle County offers free credit counseling. Call Leona Perkins at 328-8770.
Now for subject everyone wants to know about – money, preferably in the form of down payment assistance. Here are 4 sources: The Eagle County Fund, Colorado Mountain Housing Coalition, CDOH and the H20 Fund.
These resources are based on income levels which are pretty high for at least a couple of the programs. Do you make under $81,100 a year for a family of 1 (higher for more people)? You may qualify for 2 programs that offer 5% of the purchase price of a home, up to $20,000, and you do not need stellar credit to get help. That’s up to $40,000 assistance and that’s only 2 of the 4 programs, which can all be combined together.
The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA) has many programs including the ever popular Mortgage Credit Certificate (MCC), which allows buyers to take a portion of their mortgage interest as a direct credit to their income taxes (the rest of the interest is taken as a deduction). If you don’t know what this means - it’s an incredible program which can put a couple thousand dollars back in your pocket.
There’s also the Funding Partners who offer several types of loans to homebuyers and also help lenders stack all of the programs out there so you can us as many programs as possible to get you to the ultimate goal – owning your home.
I know – it’s a lot of information on a subject that is confusing at the basic level. The first step is to take the class. Second – talk to a lender. There’s a list of lenders on the Eagle County website (see links below) who work with these programs. Third – if you need it, get credit counseling. Fourth – call me with any questions along the way and when you’re ready to go find your home.
For more information on home buyer assistance and Vail Valley real estate contact Karen Gilbert at 970-926-6777 or karen@gatewayland.com