Central Florida residents hoping to buy a home but struggling to come up with a down payment have a “rare opportunity” to get at least $15,000 worth of help through a $6.3 million initiative announced Wednesday by Wells Fargo.
Known as the NeighborhoodLIFT program, it pairs homebuyer education classes with down payment assistance grants for qualifying residents in Orange, Seminole, Lake and Osceola counties.
“It’s a great opportunity. It’s a rare opportunity, really,” said Bob Ansley, president of the Orlando Neighborhood Improvement Corporation, the local nonprofit organization that is partnering with Wells Fargo on the initiative. “The market’s on fire here, and that just means basically that prices are going up. So this couldn’t come at a better time.”
The program is aimed at residents who, in most cases, make no more than 80 percent of the area’s median income, which calculates to about $51,100 for a family of four. The limits are higher — and the down payment assistance $2,500 more — for military veterans and active service members, school teachers, law-enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians.
The $6.3 million comes from Wells Fargo’s charitable foundation, and the grants don’t have to be paid back. Nor do buyers have to take out a mortgage through the bank, which is trying to rebuild trust with consumers after admitting in 2016 that it had opened millions of sham accounts that customers never requested. The program has about 10 approved lenders.
“This is our single largest philanthropic effort at Wells Fargo,” said Derek Jones, president of Wells Fargo’s North Central Florida Region. “Since 2012, we’ve had 65 of these events throughout the country … and it’s the second one we’ve had here in Central Florida. We’re coming back here stronger than ever.”
Overall, the initiative has helped 19,000 home buyers, including 200 at the first Central Florida NeighborhoodLIFT program in 2012. This time, the bank said, the public-private partnership will help 325 home buyers, and it will help others learn what they need to do to become buyers further down the road.
“The effort around education is critically important every step of the way,” Jones said. “What we’ve realized is that it’s one thing to give someone down payment assistance to help buy a home, but that doesn’t ensure that they’ll be successful sustaining that home.”
To start the process, residents should go to orlandoneighborhood.org/lift/ and determine if they qualify by income. Then they’ll need to attend the program’s launch event on Nov. 30 or Dec. 1 at the DoubleTree Orlando at SeaWorld, where financial classes and lenders will be on site. Online registration for the event is expected to fill quickly, but walk-ins will be accepted as long as money is available. (Note that applicants should come with documents listed at orlandoneighborhoodorg/lift.)
There are strict time limits on getting pre-qualified for a mortgage, finding a home, getting a contract to buy it and closing on the deal, and closings must be after Jan. 4, 2019. Ansley said he expects crushing demand, but that some people — perhaps many people — who start the process will drop out along the way.
Buyers will need to show a good credit history and qualify for a loan, for instance, and they’ll need to show they’re able to make the mortgage payments, although in Central Florida’s expensive rental market, many residents are already paying up to half of their income for housing.
“A lot of times their rent is already equivalent to a mortgage [payment] … but they just can’t afford the big lump sum for the down payment,” Jones said. “What this does is overcomes that hurdle. And we work with them so we’re not putting people in a position where they’re biting off more than they can chew.”
Buyers also can combine the NeighborhoodLIFT grants with other down payment assistance programs available through city and county governments, which could give them as much as $30,000 toward a home, Jones said. The launch event will have more information on those government programs too, he noted.
ksantich@orlandosentinel.com, 407-420-5503, @katesantich. Please consider supporting local journalism by purchasing a digital subscription to the Orlando Sentinel.
