Bilingual Homebuying Counseling – Raleigh, NC, USA
When I arrived in North Carolina in 2001 to work with Design Corps, some of the nearby counties’ hispanic populations had experienced increases of over 500% in the previous 10 years. This boom of Latinos was partly related to those who had arrived to this country as farmworkers but had since settled out of the migrant stream. They work in low wage jobs and industries such as construction and landscaping. In helping these families with the process of designing their own home, it became clear that even more important was the need to help them navigate through the mortgage world and homebuying process. For example many were even eligible for special affordable mortages though they didn’t know such programs existed and bilingual assistance was extremely limited. Besides language barriers, cultural differences existed. Many did not have any form of traditional credit even though they may be financially responsible.
One particular family who had dreamed of having a home of their own since arriving to this country twenty years ago, contacted us after hearing a radio ad about our free home-buying counseling services. In the following months I assisted them in applying for a USDA 502 affordable mortgage loan. This process included proving their status as permanent residents, their paying off past medical debts, establishing non-traditional forms of credit, waiting for federal funds to become available, and searching for their new home. I attended various events to learn more about available affordable mortgages and networked with different groups in the local Latino community to spread the information I gathered. My fluency in Spanish allowed me to be this bridge of information and provide valuable services, beyond the regular ones provided by architects.