In Tulsa, Okla., city employees are offered opportunities for homebuyer education, a forgivable down payment program, closing-cost assistance and special incentive home loans.
In St. Louis, Mo., Washington University Medical Center provides eligible employees and students with a forgivable loan to cover a portion of the down payment or closing costs on the purchase of a home located in one of five targeted neighborhoods near its campuses.
And locally, Snohomish County government recently announced plans to help its employees with homeownership, partnering with Freddie Mac’s Workforce Home Benefit program to connect employees with homebuyer education, down-payment assistance, financial counseling and mortgage-financing options. The county also will partner with nonprofit Home for Good, which offers a two-year lease-to-own program with homeownership counseling and tools to build a successful financial foundation.
It’s all part of a movement known as employee-assisted housing, which was the focus of the Snohomish County Workforce Housing Summit held Jan. 15 at the Lynnwood Convention Center.
The summit brought together about 100 local employer and nonprofit group representatives and a panel of experts to discuss the housing market and how employers can help their employees achieve the “American dream” while also improving their own work-force recruiting and retention efforts.
“One of the most important issues facing people in Snohomish County and Washington state is affordable housing,” Carl Zapora, president and chief executive officer of the United Way of Snohomish County, told the audience.
According to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, the combined median price for condos and single-family homes in Snohomish County in December was $339,675, a slight drop from year-ago numbers but still out of reach for many in a county where the median household income was estimated to be $62,325 in 2006, according to the state Office of Financial Management.
How out of reach? The Center for Housing Policy estimated that an annual average income of nearly $123,000 was needed to qualify for a mortgage in the Seattle metro area in 2006, when the median price for a home was $357,000.
Added to that, a distressed national housing market has put many would-be homebuyers on the sidelines, said Craig Nickerson, vice president of expanding markets for Freddie Mac.
“How do we resuscitate the first-time homebuyer? There are some things we all can do about it,” Nickerson said during the conference. “One way is to have a trusted intermediary.”
And that intermediary can be the employer, said Nickerson, pointing to Freddie Mac studies that have shown time and again that when it comes to getting trusted advice, employees put their employers at the top of the list.
“It does not have to be a question of a big down payment (program); it could be as simple as (counseling services),” Nickerson said of employer-sponsored housing benefits. “Many other companies make available free time for closing and information sessions.”
Freddie Mac’s Workforce Home Benefit literature notes that there are a number of components from which to pick and choose in creating an employer-assisted homeownership program, including homebuyer education, a repayable loan, a deferred loan, a forgivable loan, matched savings accounts and grants.
But panel members agreed that the foundation for a successful program is education.
“We put an anchor around the employee to make sure they are not taken advantage of,” Brian Phillips, executive director of Washington University Medical Center, said of his program’s emphasis on education.
Launched in 1997, the medical center’s employer-assisted homeownership program has cost the organization about $336,000, with program participants purchasing homes totaling more than $12 million.
“In 11 years in practice, we have not had one default or one foreclosure,” Phillips said, noting that the administration of the program has been minimal, requiring an annual meeting of key team players, with the rest of the work done via e-mail.
The benefits have far outweighed the costs, he said. Not only have neighborhoods around the university campuses been stabilized and revitalized by the program, but employees and students are close enough to campus to walk or take advantage of transit options, reducing the need for the medical center to build additional parking facilities.
“We keep getting the benefits back,” Phillips said.
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