For Rebecca, living in an apartment was like living in a shoebox.
“I was sick and tired of renting,” she remembered, “I started renting when I was 18. When I was 26, I decided to buy a home, to create a stable environment for my son.”
However, Rebecca realized that reaching her goal meant she would be taking a risk since she didn’t come from a family with knowledge of homeownership. Determined to live differently, she began researching programs that help lower-income buyers purchase a home. Her research led her to New Economics for Women (NEW), where she registered for our Homebuyer Education Workshop. In the workshop, Rebecca also learned the necessary steps to become purchase-ready along with the benefits of owning a home.
“The workshop facilitator was very motivating,” she recalled fondly, “He genuinely believed that everyone in the room could own a home.”
After the workshop, Rebecca met with a NEW counselor to identify her barriers and to create an action plan, especially to tackle her lack of credit history. With this very limited credit profile, her NEW counselor suggested that she open a secured credit card as a way to start building activity and increase her score. Additionally, Rebecca began to save aggressively. In only three (3) months, she doubled her savings, and after just seven (7) months, she had a credit score rose of 743, a 51-point jump from where she had started.
Then just a few months later, after only about a year of working with NEW and a few subsidy programs (securing over $84,000 in down payment assistance), Rebecca closed escrow on her first home!
“I did it for my son; I did it for us. We don’t live in a shoebox anymore,” she described, “We have a basketball court and a dog.”
More than a home with lots of room for today, Rebecca’s decision to pursue her goals has provided a future and an example for her son.
