JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – For most Americans, it is the biggest purchase they’ll ever make in their lives. However, owning a home might feel like a goal that is out of financial reach for some.
It’s just one of the real-life challenges a new partnership between the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Zillow is trying to tackle head-on, by offering personal guidance to potential buyers through housing counselors.
“Most people don’t know that this is available, sometimes for free, sometimes for a low cost, to have someone who doesn’t work for a lender, a broker, or an agent who’s just helping navigate through the process to understand,” said Julia Gordon is the Assistant Secretary for housing and the federal housing commissioners.
She said HUD started using virtual methods to broaden their access and reach to more Americans earlier this year.
Alongside Zillow, which reaches 217 million visitors a month, they’ve created the “Let’s Make Home the Goal” initiative to generate awareness of the availability and benefits housing counselors can provide.
Housing counselors can help potential homeowners:
- Map out a plan to saving money and advise them how to increase their credit score
- Decide what the buyer can afford
- Address financial hardship
- Avoid foreclosures.
Gordon says The Let’s Make Home the Goal campaign has reached millions of potential homebuyers in more than 40 metropolitan areas so far. HUD is also hoping to close the racial homeownership gap.
“In many communities of color, you don’t have as many families with a history of homeownership. Somebody might not have had parents who owned a home, and that just gives them less experience when they go into the complicated home-buying process. There’s also, of course, a long history of different kinds of bias against families of color in the homeownership process, and so having a housing counselor by your side can be a really powerful way for a first-time or first-generation home buyer,” Gordon said.