This is a first for me - I have a buyer who is purchasing a home built by Habitat For Humanity.
The buyer, Maria, came to me via a referral partner. She had already found the neighborhood while she worked, briefly, with another agent. I'm still unclear why it didn't work out between buyer and agent, but I do know that she had that agent write an offer on another HFH home in the same development and it turned out to be already under contract.
I met Maria the day after I first spoke with her by phone. We looked at the house she wanted, the one no longer available, and then we looked at what will become, hopefully, her new home. The house had been framed and the plumbing installed, but we could still figure out what each area was going to be and got a feel for the floor plan. We headed over to a nearby McDonalds and we got going on the contract after verifying with the listing agent that the home was still available.
Since this is my first HFH transaction, I had lots to learn. The buyer, already with a lender's pre-approval in hand, could take the easier of the two paths to home ownership with HFH. She's got to take a HUD-approved First Time Homebuyers class and she's got to have four hours of "sweat equity" in the house. She doesn't have to pick up a hammer or lay carpet, but she will be volunteering in a Habitat ReStore for half a day. If she hadn't already been pre-approved for a loan, she would have gone down a different path which includes more volunteer hours in addition to the class.
I stopped by the site this weekend to check on the progress. There was a party going on across the street. A new homeowner was getting the keys to her house! Many of the party guests were those who had worked on her house. I got to meet the HFH coordinator/contractor who explained that her volunteers only work on the framing and outside of the houses. Since the outside of Maria's house is now completed, the responsibility goes to the builder to complete the inside and the finish out.
In another month or two, Maria will be happily ensconced in her new Habitat For Humanity home.
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