| LESSON | TEACHER | FULL LESSONS |
| 1 | D. Schwartz | Lessons from the ALRI |
| 2 | S. Bernstein | Homebuying Babes |
| 3 | N. Coffey | Navigating Homebuying |
| 4 | N. Coffey | Navigating Homebuying |
| 5 | D. Alexander | Navigating Homebuying |
| 6 | N. Coffey & D. Alexander | Navigating Homebuying |
| 7 | D. Alexander | Navigating Homebuying |
| 8 | D. Jarrat | Students Who Are Ready |
| 9 | V. Gouvea | Content Based Instruction |
| 10 | M. Hassett | Exploring Concepts |
1) How Much Will It Cost? by Deborah Schwartz, Adult Literacy Resource Institute
This lesson asks students to review the A.L.R.I.'s and FannieMae Foundation's homebuying readiness materials in order to gain an understanding of the costs of buying and keeping a home. It can be used as a class project or as an assessment tool to evaluate how students research, ask questions and answer them. The teacher can provide an amortization chart that calculates interest rates paid on a specific amount of time over a period of time. These charts can be found in amortization handbooks at the public library or by speaking directly to a mortgage originator at a bank. The accompanying two-page information sheet, "Homebuying: Step by Step from Offer to Closing," provides a good tally sheet to make sure the students have considered the costs accrued throughout the homebuying process.
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Shawnda Williams lives in Lynn, MA. She is tired of paying rent for an apartment that she doesn't have any control over. Together with her sister Michelle, who has two children, their mother Mrs. Williams and her mother, Shawnda and Michelle's grandmother, Mrs. Foote, they have decided to look for a house to buy for the whole family. They have spoken many times about what they would like in a house.
Michelle wants a unit with at least two bedrooms and a smaller alcove that can be used for her youngest daughter's bedroom. Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Foote want to stay in the neighborhood they have lived in most of their life as it's close to the bus, train, their friends, church and the clinic where they trust the doctors and nurses. Shawnda wants a big yard for the kids. She dreams of setting up a hammock and reading her favorite books during her week of vacation in August.
Shawnda feels optimistic after visiting the mortgage broker at her bank. With her mother's and grandmother's bit of savings, alongside Michelle's and Shawnda's work history as employed nurses, they might just be able to pull this off. She's so excited that she has signed up for a first-time homebuying class at a local community center, and for the past nine Sunday mornings, after everyone else has left for church, she looks at the real estate section of the paper to see what kinds of houses are on the market. Last Sunday she read about a triple-decker in good condition that was selling for $225,000. The next day after work, she stayed on the bus for a few more stops and strolled down the street to look at the house.
First of all, the house would need a paint job. The lawn was so overgrown that it looked like a forest. But then Shawnda noticed a fruit tree alongside the dilapidated fence; she swore there were small pears growing from it- egg like and golden, and she could imagine living there. She could imagine cutting back the weeds to let the tree get plenty of sun.
If the Williams/Foote family qualify for a 5% MHFA down payment program, how much money will they need to have in order to cover the costs of the down payment, home inspection, mortgage application, lawyer fees and closing fees?
If they don't qualify for the MHFA program, how much money will they need for the above costs?
If they need to borrow only the money for the mortgage payments (since they have been able to save the money for the down payment), and they are approved for a 30-year fixed mortgage at a 7.0% interest rate, what will be total costs of their monthly payments?
Because Shawnda is only paying 1/3 of the mortgage, what will her monthly payments be?
USE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ABOUT THE HOMEBUYING PROCESS TO HELP ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS:
Making an Offer: Your offer will be made contingent upon: a satisfactory inspection (to you the buyer) you being able to get conventional financing and a satisfactory review of condo association budget, fee paying history, owner-occupancy.
Deposit at Offer: The amount is negotiable between $500 and 5% of the price of the property. Keep it as low as possible (this is part of your down payment).
Accepted Offer: Check all the dates for reasonableness, an accepted Offer must be in writing. You have: 10 days to get Inspection, 5 days to apply for mortgage, 21 days (from application) to approval, and 7 days to closing.
Home Inspection: Once you have an accepted Offer, schedule a Home Inspection ASAP. Be at the inspection so can ask questions.
Purchase & Sale: This is the big contract. Hire a real estate attorney to review it with you. Negotiate the attorney fee in advance. You will have to write another check as part of the down payment at this point. Again, this amount is negotiable. You have now written two checks toward the down payment. The first one was when you made the offer.
Mortgage Application: Phone city or Community Development Corp. to get the latest information on mortgages. Schedule your mortgage application with an "originator." The application process will take about 1 1/2 hours. They will want to know everything about your life and money! Don't apply for more than one mortgage.
Follow-up to Mortgage Application: During the following week the mortgage "originator' will continue to phone you and ask for more information.
Loan Approval: After 3 to 4 weeks you should receive a Loan Commitment letter. Read it. Make sure there are no new contingencies. Sign it & return it to bank.
Fire & Hazard Insurance: Now you can buy your Home Insurance. You will get your Insurance Binder. Take it to the closing. (If you are buying a Condo, you may not need Home Insurance. Ask if it's included in the condo fee.)
Final Walk Through Before Closing: This is your last chance to check that all is as it should be with the property before you close. Do this on or as close to the closing date as possible.
Closing Cost Sheet: Usually about 48 hours before closing, the bank attorney will tell you what amount to write your final check for. You must use a bank check. The following are approximate costs on a $100,000 loan:
Balance 5% down payment... ...$2,000
Closing Costs .. ....$1,200
Escrow (2 months tax/ins) . . ..$ 350
Pre-paids (interest) .. . ....$ 600
*Private Mortgage Insurance (PM. ...$ ----
TOTAL .. ......$4,150
*No PMI on Soft 2nd Mortgage
Closing Day: You will attend the closing taking with you, The
Insurance Binder and your final certified bank check.
2) Generating Questions by Sam Bernstein, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center
At a certain point, I decided that the pictures in the curriculum could work to catalyze a good discussion and might lead students into some initial research about homebuying. So I copied and cut out all 40 pictures from the workbook.
During that class, I spread out the pictures on the table in front of pairs of students and asked them to choose two pictures per pair, talk about them together and write a question about each picture. The students hemmed and hawed. They had a lot to say in Chinese, but not much in English. They were hard pressed to wrap themselves around the specific details of the pictures; they were equally hard pressed to put themselves in a questioning mode. I walked around trying to encourage them and corrected grammar here and there. Then I asked a student from each pair to write their question on the white board. The questions were pretty bad. For example, one pair of students wrote an out-of-focus question about the different types of houses, colonial, duplex, etc. How much does a Victorian House cost? Finally, I helped the whole group revise everything and we came up with a list of about 6 questions that I could email to a Realtor that we had invited to class in order to address the students more technical homebuying questions.
1. How can you buy a house if you don't have money?
2. Is it cheaper to buy a condo?
3. How much does a condo cost?
4. What's the lowest down payment one should pay? (Some students thought it was 50%)
5. How much do you have to pay a year?
6. How do you get a credit card?
3) Down payments by Nancy Coffey, Operation Bootstrap
Using a local real estate brochure, I asked each student to choose a
house for himself/herself that was not necessarily a dream house, but a
realistic option for the first house he/she might buy. Students pasted
the pictures and information about these houses on worksheets. We then
used calculators to figure out the cost of 5% and 3% down payments. A few
students said they couldn't afford a house now anyway, so they would go
for a dream house. Others scaled down their choices after they calculated
down payment costs.
4) Using LOTUS 1-2-3 by Nancy Coffey, Operation Bootstrap
A staff member brought in her Lotus 1-2-3 program so that students could figure out monthly mortgage payments for the houses they had chosen. We used a fixed 30 year mortgage program at a 7 1/4% interest rate. Using the Lotus software, students were also able to determine the total cost of the house over the 30 year period. Those who had time, figured payments and overall costs for a 20 year mortgage as well.
Every student loved this activity. The computer program worked like
magic. Using it gave students a real feeling of power. For all students,
this was an excellent opportunity to practice reading large numbers in
English, and to learn a new computer skill.
5) Another Approach to Calculating by Dulany Alexander, Operation Bootstrap
Students used Lotus' amortization calculators to generate figures that were then plugged into a spreadsheet that I built (i.e. the spreadsheet contained cells that I had already defined with numeric functions). The purpose of this activity was to explore the effect of the variables of term and interest rate on the monthly payments and total "lifetime" interest of a particular mortgage.
For the final step, the students used both hand-held and computer-resident
calculators to calculate down payments as actual percentages of the selling
price.
6) Using the Internet to Calculate by Dulany Alexander, Operation Bootstrap
Although we have not yet used the homebuying resources available on the World Wide Web, I'm hoping that we will have time enough to explore some of them. I've reviewed the following two Web sites and believe they each provide a good jumping off point to beginning Internet users who are interested in learning more about what it takes to finance a home:
http://www.fanniemae.com
Among other things the FannieMae site includes calculators and text
explaining the homebuying process.
http://www.bankrate.com
If you go to the sidebar category RATES, and select HOME, you can learn
about various mortgage rates and programs.
7) The 28% Rule by Nancy Coffey & Dulany Alexander, Operation Bootstrap
One of the most significant lessons was the eye-opening "28% rule."
As students looked over two pamphlets from the lobby of a local bank about
the mortgage process and mortgage financing options, we were all struck
by the bank's assertion that one's mortgage payment should not exceed 28%
of one's gross annual income. We hypothesized what that would mean for
a person working full time at $10/hour. We calculated the maximum mortgage
payment allowable under the "28% rule," and having already completed the
amortization table exercise in which the class looked up the monthly payments
at current interest rates for houses on the market locally, students' "dream
houses" seemed even more like dreams. We were grounded in the reality of
the limits of the affordable housing market. This was an important step
in learning about the value of one's money and the cost of homebuying.
8) Special Mortgage Programs by Dwight Jarrat, ABCD's South Side Head Start
One of the most interesting lessons of the unit was on how to go about getting a mortgage. To begin this lesson, I brought in an amortization handbook from the library, and in pairs, students figured out how much they would have to pay for their monthly mortgages at various interest rates and over various amounts of time. I also introduced the concept of soft-second mortgages through the city's first time homebuying programs for low and low-moderate income households.
Later, I distributed information about first time homebuying classes offered through city programs such as the Boston Home Center, a division of Boston Community and Neighborhood Development, and Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance (MAHA) reminding students that in order to be eligible for many of these programs they would have to complete a first time homebuying class. For students like mine who were seriously considering buying homes, the listing of resources distributed at the ALRI homebuying project meetings was indispensable (See local homebuying resource list.)
Through this unit on homebuying readiness, I learned, along with my
students, that most Boston-area neighborhoods offer first time homebuying
classes and programs for their residents. In one case, through the auspices
of the Boston Home Center in partnership with City Life/Vida Urbana, first
time homebuying classes were being offered in Spanish!
9) Getting Money to Buy a Home by Veronica Gouvea, Roxbury Community College
We began the unit by brainstorming reasons people need money above and beyond food and clothing, and possible sources from which to borrow money. The class came up with the following reasons people need money: medical emergencies, buying a car, education, vacations, renting or buying property, and starting a business, most were especially interested in the latter. When we brainstormed possible sources for borrowing money the students listed friends, family and banks. After this, the books were distributed.
We did some scanning to familiarize the students with the FannieMae
Foundation's ESOL curriculum, How to Buy a House in the United States.
I informed them that although we would not use the entire text, it could
be used a reference for future questions about financing one's home. This
notion of the book as a resource reinforced the importance of finding information
independent of teachers, friends and family, and the benefits of being
"resourceful" as an important part of learning.
10) What Does a Home Cost? by Marie Hassett, ABCD's LearningWorks
The most sobering lesson we undertook addressed the cost of living issues.
All of my students can be classified as low-income, and for many of them,
coming up with enough money to meet their expenses presents an ongoing
challenge. We figured out a one month budget for a two-earner family with
one child, each parent earning slightly more than minimum wage, but less
than $10 per hour. Although many of the students are working and living
under similar conditions, most of them had not calculated their cost of
living in this way before. It was obvious from the exercise that without
some sort of assistance, from extended family, private, or public sources,
that a family in this situation would be unable to save the money that
would allow them to put a down payment on a house, pay for closing costs,
or even maintain monthly mortgage payments.
Reading:
Stephanie Ebbert. "Advocates running out of options to shelter homeless." Boston Globe, April 6, 1999.
Questions
Figure out what kinds of jobs people can get and how much those jobs will pay if the applicant has a GED/high school diploma or less. Now, figure out a budget for: