Touring a new home as she shopped last year, Barbara Sharp was somewhat surprised to find the kitchen located in the basement.
It was a nice surprise.
“I just think it’s cute,” she said. “I believe it’s what attracted me to the house in the first place.”
Sharp had been renting a home when the landlord issued notification that she needed to move out.
“It was a short-notice kind of thing,” she said.
Sharp surveyed her options.
“Apartments are so expensive – I didn’t want to do that,” she said.
Since she didn’t want to move in with a family member, either, there was one more option.
“I thought, ‘You know what? I’ll think I’ll just apply for a loan and try to buy a new house,’” she said.
Sharp called a number she had seen on signs around her neighborhood advertising “grant money for home-buyers.”
To qualify for the grant, she would have to attend a home-buyer education workshop, followed by a one-on-one session with a housing counselor. The Southeast Community Development Corp. was one of the organizations offering such services, so she got in touch and signed up.
“They had a wealth of information at the workshop,” said Sharp, who had bought a home once before in the 1990s, a process that didn’t end all that well. “If I had known then what I know now, I could’ve saved myself some heartache,” she said.
At the workshop, she learned about home-buying basics – how to work with realtors and lenders, and other topics.
“They talked about saving for emergencies,” she said. “Not just spend, spend, spend and never save, save, save.”
The Southeast CDC also informed her of grant and loan programs to help her purchase her home, including the Maryland Mortgage Program, Community Development Block Grant and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta. Ms. Sharp was able to get the Maryland Mortgage Program and the Community Development Block Grant.
As is common in the home-buying experience, there were a couple hurdles.
“I completed everything I needed to complete and put in an offer, and then I found out that somebody else had already put in an offer, and the seller took it,” Sharp said. “I thought, ‘This is my house? Why did they take their offer?’”
A couple weeks later, her realtor called and informed her that the transaction fell through. Sharp again made her offer, and this time the seller took it.
Sharp has been in her home for one year; her monthly mortgage payments are substantially lower than when she was renting.
Other things are falling into place. A social worker, she has found a new job. She has a new place of worship, as well.
“There are some other ladies at the church who have showed some interest in buying a house,” she said. “It would be their first time. Maybe the Southeast CDC could come out and do a workshop there.”