As home prices and mortgage rates continue to stretch budgets, many would-be homebuyers are wondering if they’ll ever be able to make the jump.
Industry professionals say that creative financing tools and professional guidance can make домовладение more attainable, but a lack of awareness continues to stand in the way.
Three voices from different corners of the housing industry — a former agent turned property inspector, a national housing economist, and the founder of a resource hub for авансовый платеж programs — each described to ЖильеПроволока how affordability pressures have evolved, what’s available to help buyers and why too few people know where to look.
Watching the market shift from both sides
John Obermiller, a former Век 21 agent in Северная Каролина who now inspects properties for a local municipality, has seen the market both as a professional and as a potential buyer.
Even with some recent cooling, he said доступность remains the central barrier.
“In my general area, things have slowed down,” Obermiller said. “Houses are sitting on the market for a while. However, there are particular neighborhoods that are (promoted) specifically through the Realtors marketing directly to New York, New Jersey, and they’re drawing people in specifically to those neighborhoods.”
Obermiller pointed to строители такой как Доктор Хортон, which advertise relatively lower per-square-foot prices than competitors. But he said monthly costs remain daunting.
“(D.R. Horton) was the last I knew that were building at about $190 a square foot, which is well below $285 and over $300 for the rest of the builders,” he said. “But even then, I figured out pretty quick what the payments are for something like a $350,000 loan with everything tied in. I think it was running about $3,000 a month, just for a starter home.”
Cash buyers from higher-cost states make competition harder for locals, he added. But specialized programs offer buyers the chance to арендовать before buying, allowing time to save.
“In essence, what they’re doing is they’re allowing someone to pick out a home that they’re interested in,” Obermiller said. “This company will then purchase the home for them, and it will then rent back for around a year, and then they will allow the person to close if they choose to. If they don’t choose to, then they walk away.”
How the market heated up
Obermiller said the portability of jobs and influx of work-from-home employees free to move wherever they like that began during the COVID-19 pandemic continues to effect the flow of housing.
“People who weren’t able to move and qualify could now move and still qualify for a home at a higher income,” he said. “So they had a higher income from another area. They had higher equity in their home, so now they had greater purchasing power. Of course, bidding wars resulted.”
Obermiller also argues that оценки and lender practices allowed inflated values to stick.
“Nothing changed in the industry. It didn’t cost more to build the houses, none of that,” he said. “But they kept pricing higher and higher and higher, and so you keep having this flood of people coming in and higher demand. But the point is that the banks are now being put on the hook. They’re supporting that higher price point. The banks are allowing that loan to support that higher price point.”
He said that limiting appraisals to true market values, with buyers covering any excess on their own, could have tempered the surge.
Bill Garber, director of communications for the Институт Оценки, directly refuses that notion.
“Appraisers are an easy scapegoat on both sides of this,” he said. “When sellers are trying to sell, they have certain expectations. And when buyers are trying to buy, they have certain expectations.”
Garber emphasized that appraisers are meant to remain independent, focusing only on establishing fair market value.
“There is a difference between price and value,” he said. “The market dynamics can skew in certain directions, but the appraiser’s job is to just keep their eye on the market value ball.”
That role, he added, is critical for lenders that must ensure their loans are safe and sound.
“They don’t want to lend on something that’s not worth what people think it is. It doesn’t benefit the borrower. It doesn’t benefit the lender,” Garber said.
Agents, awareness and buyer sacrifices
Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist and vice president of research at the Национальная ассоциация риэлторов (NAR), said agents are increasingly stepping in to guide buyers toward affordability programs.
“Realtors are helping their clients understand low down payment options that could be available in their local communities,” Lautz said. “In fact, some agents will make this into a niche, working with first-time homebuyers to really help them understand what programs could be available to help with pointing them in the right direction.
“Mortgage brokers are experts in this topic, as well. There’s also ФАС loans, Вирджиния loans, Министерство сельского хозяйства США loans — then you have state and local communities that may have programs as well.”
Even with these programs, Lautz said many successful buyers rely on personal sacrifice.
“We’ve seen successful homebuyers cut spending everywhere they can,” she said. “So non-essential items go out the window, as well as spending on clothes or going out to eat. Some do take second jobs to be able to save for a down payment. So they’re willing to make that sacrifice, and then others even move in with family before purchasing so that they don’t have to pay rent, which can be very costly in many communities.”
A persistent obstacle, Lautz said, is that buyers often don’t realize help is available.
“The myth of the 20% down payment is very persistent, even though there are low down payment options,” she said. “So, getting the word out to consumers, I think, is half the battle, and I think homeownership could be much closer within reach if people were aware of these programs.”
Lautz noted that falling ставки по ипотечным кредитам in recent months have already spurred demand. “Certainly, seeing a change in mortgage interest rates has been very encouraging, and mortgage applications are up this week as a result of that,” she said.
She also pointed to a variety housing types — condominiums, вспомогательные жилые единицы and adaptive reuse — as ways to broaden affordable supply.
Tracking programs that buyers don’t realize exist
Rob Chrane, founder and CEO of Ресурс первоначального взноса, leads the largest nationwide database of homeownership programs. His company tracks more than 2,500 initiatives across the country, ranging from grants to affordable mortgage products.
“Seventy-five percent of the programs in the database are some type of down payment help or closing cost help,” Chrane said. “You know, they could be grants, they could be repayable, they could be forgivable. But we really are tracking about 11 or 12 different types of programs.”
Chrane said eligibility typically combines household income and property limits.
“There’s a component that has to do with certain household characteristics,” he said. “And then there’s also the property has to be eligible, because when you think about it, every one of these programs has some sort of specific geographic boundary.”
Some programs, he noted, even allow small multiunit properties if the buyer occupies one unit.
Connecting through agents, LOs and MLSs
The database is integrated with multiple listing services nationwide, flagging eligible properties for agents. Between 600,000 and 700,000 агенты now have access, Chrane said.
The platform also works with consumer-facing search portals such as Риэлтор.com.
“Somebody said to me one time that the problem isn’t coming up with a down payment,” Chrane said. “The problem is understanding that these programs exist. People just don’t know there’s such a thing.”
He said early exposure to available help through property searches can reshape buyer expectations well before the purchase occurs.
“And our largest MLS customer has a little over 100,000 members,” Chrane said. “I can tell you, there’s still agents out there that have access to our tools that don’t even realize it.”
Far from shrinking, Chrane said the number of programs is steadily climbing.
“There’s no single silver bullet (to tackle unaffordability), but obviously, down payment assistance can help a lot — and it does help in a lot of situations,” he said. “Hopefully, interest rates come down, but you can’t bet on that. So it’s about increasing supply and helping people.”
From Obermiller’s view of inflated prices and cash-rich competition, to Lautz’s emphasis on agent guidance and consumer education, to Chrane’s mission of cataloging thousands of aid programs, the message is consistent: help exists but too few buyers know about it.
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