Summit educates potential home buyers on foreclosed properties

By Stephanie Gleason, Special to The Sentinel

Just over a year after the collapse of some of our nation’s largest financial institutions, due in part to the mortgage crisis, Omega Gold Development Group, Inc., partnered with several other nonprofit organizations, as well as Freddie Mac, Chase, Industrial Bank and Bank of America, to provide the Prince George’s County Workforce Homeownership Summit, which took place Saturday.

The goal of the summit was to “assist the ‘workforce’ home buyer in navigating the home-buying process as well as providing tips for sustaining homeownership,” according to the summit’s Web site.

There are 3,100 foreclosed properties in Prince George’s County, according to Freddie Mac. The Neighborhood Stabilization Program grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, are helping to allow Prince George’s County and the City of College Park to offer down payment and closing cost assistance toward the purchase of foreclosed homes in certain ZIP codes, through the “Down Payment on your Dream” and the “Work and Live in College Park” programs, according to their Web sites.

Twanna Fleming, a Prince George’s County resident, is trying to purchase a foreclosed home with the NSP grants. Fleming is experiencing frustrations with what buying a foreclosed home means. “They’re using the money to give us a down payment, but it seems like the money would be better used had they fixed the foreclosure homes and let us find our own down payment money. But, these homes aren’t worth purchasing.”

“One of the things we also talk to them about is understanding the costs and benefits of purchasing a vacant, foreclosed property. Vacant, foreclosed properties sometimes look better on paper than they do in person,” said Scott Willis, vice president of business development and manager of Multi-Cultural and Affordable for Chase. Willis said that buyers looking for a foreclosed property need to consider the value that is in purchasing a property and being a homeowner, even if the home needs work. “There’s still an affordability opportunity in the market and that’s what we’re really trying to drive home.”

These programs require applicants to complete eight hours of homeownership counseling from an agency that has been approved by HUD.

Saturday’s summit offered up to six of these hours for free. Usually, Omega Gold Development Group charges $49 for the eight hours of counseling.

The summit provided 11, 45-minute sessions on topics such as: “Are You Ready to Buy a Home?”, “$8,000 Reason to Buy Now” and “Foreclosure Prevention.”

“If they want down payment and closing cost assistance they have to go through a program certified by HUD. [At the summit] we have on-site HUD-approved counseling agencies where the facilitators are up in the classroom giving them the counseling,” said Bleu Colquitt, executive director of the Omega Gold Development Group. Six of the 11 sessions counted toward the eight required HUD hours.

Khaleehah Austin, a newly educated county resident, seemed excited as she looked toward the future. She said that she is planning to purchase a home and that the sessions were very helpful. “I’m learning a lot about buying a home.”

This event is “giving buyers not only financial resources but the educational resources to purchase properties in today’s environment,” Willis said.

Homebuyer education classes are “exactly the kind of initiative, that we think combines public, private, non-profit entities working together to break the back of the economic downturn,” said Mary Hunter of the Housing Initiative Partnership.

Despite the progress this summit signified, there were still reminders of the lingering effects of the housing crisis. Janie Daniels of District Heights came to the summit to try to get help to avoid foreclosure. “They’re about to foreclose on me and I don’t want to leave. I’m just holding on.” The summit was not only to focus on new homeownership, but “preservation of homes (prevention of foreclosure) for current homeowners,” according the summit website. Daniels said that she spoke with the representative from Housing Options & Planning Enterprises, Inc., who was going to try to help her.