Creating new homeowners
Housing coalition creating homeownership opportunities
Date published: 3/5/2006
By EMILY BATTLE
Twenty-five houses on the edge of Fredericksburg's Mayfield neighborhood could help provide something that can be hard to find for many who work in the city--the opportunity to own a home.
Last summer, the Central Virginia Housing Coalition bought these homes, roughly 50-year-old brick houses off Airport Avenue.
They have been rental properties for decades and, as leases expire and tenants move out, the CVHC is rehabbing the homes, spending between $13,000 and $15,000 per house to replace windows and roofs and add air conditioning.
The group will then use a combination of state money and federal money funneled through the city to provide affordable financing, along with help toward down payments and closing costs, to sell the homes to people who would not normally be able to own homes in Fredericksburg's high-priced real estate market.
The CVHC plans to sell them at about $150,000 apiece. According to the Virginia Association of Realtors, the average home sale price in the Fredericksburg metro area in January was $354,271.
"It's going to create homeownership, where people who were unable to own a home before are able to own a home in the city of Fredericksburg," said CVHC Executive Director Gary Parker. "I don't know of any other area in the city that has something to compare to what we have in Mayfield."
The money to buy the homes came from the CVHC's sale last fall of 17.5 acres it owned off Fall Hill Avenue to K. Hovnanian Homes, Parker said.
With that $2.6 million, along with a loan from the National Bank of Fredericksburg, the coalition bought the homes, which are spread along Duke Street, South Street and Howard Avenue, for $2.9 million from a partnership registered to local businessman Lewis Graves.
Finding opportunities like this in the city hasn't been easy for the CVHC. The money that will provide affordable loans for those who buy these homes comes from a state program called Supporting Partnerships and Revitalizing Communities, or SPARC, run by the Virginia Housing Development Authority.
It's the third time the CVHC has been allocated loan funds from the competitive statewide program, but the first time the group has been able to use those funds to create homeowners within the city limits.
Read more stories about Fredericksburg
Date published: 3/5/2006
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