New Life Homes Self-Help Homeownership Program: Fill & Download for Free

Wow. At the time that I write this answer, there is only one coherent answer here that makes sense and isn’t tied up in racist, ridiculous, nonsensical rhetoric that keeps getting spread around by irresponsible people who couldn’t buy a clue about Black people if they had all the money in the world.This is why Black people vote Democrat. As one answer so ineloquently stated…Any decisive action on government giveaways (which do not include Social Security -- set up to be covered by SS taxes paid by the recipients and backed up by the fund that Johnson “Madoff” with) would mean reducing them (along with defense spending). The Democratic narrative is that Republicans will take away unentitled benefits and put Blacks “back in chains.” Despite the illogic of the claim , it's an effective emotional appeal.It’s almost laughable. Why does any discussion about Black people have to start with entitlement programs, when these are the same entitlement programs that Whites use? And a large percentage of whites use these programs every year. So why are Blacks demonized for the same behavior?People who believe this nonsense are simply ignorant of all the facts and don’t know the first thing about Black people in general…which is, we are just like you in so many ways. Entitlement programs are important but the way some of you think, you’d would believe that 99% of us use them. This is just not true.Sure, many black people are mired in poverty, but this is not why we vote Democrat.Black people vote Democrat because it is the best party that currently addresses our issues and concerns. Republicans don’t seem to know/care about that. They do no outreach to us whatsoever and just attack us by trying to remind us that it was Democrats that started the Klan. (Tongue in cheek)This laughable information keeps us in the voting booth for Democrats. That should tell you how bad the Republican Party is. When we know that Dems started the Klan and we still pull the lever for them.Black people, as you all know, started off as Republicans. We tend to be pretty loyal. However, starting with FDR’s New Deal, this deal included African Americans and some of us began to do the unthinkable…switch to the Democratic party. As the Democratic Party continued to work on behalf of working class people, more blacks began to defect.Some of you may not know this, but we’ve been paying taxes in this country for decades. We’ve been taxed many different ways, directly and indirectly, while not receiving the same standard of service as our white counterparts. What you call “handouts”, we call “services”. You know, it’s the same thing you call it too when you receive assistance from your own government for things.When the G.I. bill was signed, it was a historic piece of legislation. Since homeownership is key to building wealth in this country, Whites coming back from WWII were able to settle down and buy homes. They said goodbye to the old tenements that they were living in, the last of them, and moved to wonderful homes in the cities and suburbs.Blacks were cut out of this. They couldn’t reap the same benefits as whites even as they did the same jobs and fought in the war. So what did they do? They came home to the same shacks they’d lived in. Some of the federal war housing became available to blacks as whites were able to buy their own homes. When whites fled some of these communities, real estate brokers refused to give Blacks mortgages, even when many of them qualified. They just tore the homes in two, rented them as duplexes, and made a boatload of money by doubling the rent in many cases, and turning thousands of Blacks into renters instead of homeowners. This DENIED them wealth AND as Whites fled away from cities, took away the tax base. It’s what most Republicans call Democratic policies in the cities when they are chastising us.What have Democratic policies done for people in Baltimore, Chicago, New York?Yeah that was when Whites fled from integration, leaving no effective tax base behind because Whites refused to give them home loans (Dem and Republican). You mean that policy?This is how the government treated its own citizens who fought in the war, thanks to their skin color. This effectively pushed black citizens into crushing, crippling poverty and it was government sanctioned.Meanwhile, on the White side of town, the economy was never better for them. It created this racial caste system that still exists to this day.Democrats have spoken out against these injustices while Republicans offer speeches about bootstraps. Black people are well aware that the government in many cases was the one who removed their boots. Many never had boots to begin with. The Republican message hasn’t resonated with Blacks because it’s not a message rooted in reality.To tell a group of people who have schools where the children don’t have enough books to go around, so they have to share three to a book, that its their fault for living in poverty is ridiculous, especially when they know poverty is a hard thing to break themselves. Many Whites know this from their own rags-to -middle class stories. But they were able to escape this with the G.I. Bill, great schools, health care, job security, a police force that didn’t act like an occupying force, and good paying jobs that paid more to whites than it did for Blacks. Blacks were forced to work in unsafe, unsanitary conditions that shortened their life spans and/or made them sick. In many places, they didn’t even have hospitals nearby where they could go when that happened.So, recap. If I am born a black child into crushing poverty, a rented home where blacks pay double the rent, terrible schools where there is no heat, books that you can’t take home, bad teachers, no healthcare, parents are not getting paid much money, just how is that child to compete against white children who at least had the basics?We live in the same country but you don’t know our stories. We know your stories. But again, you don’t know ours.It would be great if a Republican candidate could come out and address these inequalities. It would be great if a Republican can offer some type of relief to these communities without telling them that it’s their fault for everything. Sure, there is plenty of fault to be passed around from the community, the leaders, the people, and its children. But we can’t pretend that institutional racism, the failure of integration, and the bias we continue to hold didn’t play a large role here. Because it did.The Democratic party is slow to act but they’ve taken the first step, and that is acknowledgment. To believe that black people just want to wallow in victimhood is not only insulting, it’s downright bullshit. Take a look at our HISTORY. I see NO VICTIMS here. I see a great people who worked themselves from slavery to the White House. That’s what I see.Some Republicans love to talk about how Blacks depend on the “handouts” from the federal government and look to government to solve all their problems is laughable. Black people have rarely had the support of the Federal government and yet, we still managed to survive despite the race riots, the lynching, the killings, the KKK, bombings, racism, JIM CROW, discrimination, and isolation. Blacks are not victims. We are survivors. Black people are very strong people who take disappointment and suffering like you take bread and water. We know how to survive because we’ve done it.When the Great Depression hit all of America, Black people were at their most vulnerable, but we became even more creative and looking for more ways to survive it like we did everything else.The Democratic Party knows this and their message appeals to us much better than the speeches and lecturing of the Republican Party. We know where your policies lead to; more suffering and more poverty.Your War on Crime policies just threw more and more of us in jail. Your war on Abortion just ensured that more black children would end up in more crippling poverty and abuse. Your War to keep the Death Penalty just ensured that more Black defendants would wind up going to the death chamber percentage wise than whites. The Southern Strategy just pushed the racists that were in the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, where they happily reside today.Your War to protect Corporations just ensure that regulations that are supposed to protect people, go to protect the people who line your pockets. No Child Left Behind just left our children left behind. This led to hundreds and hundreds of OUR schools in OUR neighborhoods to be closed. (See Chicago) Your war on the environment just ensured that more children of color would be harmed by your relaxing clean air and water laws. The War against Climate Change will ensure that those who live on the coasts will suffer most and those who can’t afford to just up and relocate will cause their deaths and more destruction. Your war against Gun Control (huge) will ensure that more of our children will continue to get their hands on more guns and will continue to destroy our communities at a rate that was once thought impossible. Your war on Healthcare will continue to ensure that only the richest will be able to afford it, while you make it harder for children and people of color who are vulnerable won’t be able to attain health coverage for their conditions. This is a huge problem in our communities and yet you want to take the healthcare that we did get from our forever president, Obama.In your War with Homeland Security, it will ensure that immigrants with dark skin and who pray to Allah will continue to be demonized. A small segment of the Black population are Muslim, and they are affected by the current President’s laws against certain people’s ability to come in and out the country. As if Black people aren’t stigmatized and discriminated against enough, now if they are Muslim, they have an extra added worry that I’m sure they didn’t need.In the Republican Party’s war against entitlement programs, it will ensure that more of us will wind up impoverished for no reason. Instead of expanding the program to ensure that people who are the most vulnerable get the help they need, Republicans want to take this away. In the war against wars in general, it will ensure that more men of color will go and fight for this country, losing their lives to protect American interest.Entitlement programs is such a small part of this and those who believe that we only vote Democrat because of welfare, I believe are simple minded bigots. We are more complex than just looking for an EBT card. It’s ridiculous to insinuate anything else, even as Whites look for the same benefits.I wrote a lot, just looking at some of the ridiculous answers here. It shows we have a long way to go. However, there is much more to this than food stamps and TANF. It has everything to do with the fact that the agenda the Republicans are pushing does nothing to address the needs in the black community. If there was a sensible Republican candidate that did so, I’m sure he/she could get well over 20% of our support. We don’t vote Democrat in lockstep for nothing. We’re just like you and vote our interests too. Since not all of us are on some type of assistance, then our needs extend well past food benefits. It sucks that this even has to be said. It’s been so drilled into some of your heads that…ALL BLACKS ARE ON WELFARE ALL BLACKS ARE ON WELFARE ALL BLACKS ARE ON WELFARE BLACKS ARE ON WELFARE BLACKS ARE ON WELFARE BLACKS ARE ON WELFARE….Many of you will believe this until the day you die and then you teach it to your children, and they grow up believing lies.The thought of that…I swear makes me want to gag. One of these answers made me sick to my stomach. To believe that some of you call yourselves educated and intelligent and to believe such nonsense is appalling and disgraceful.It is not Black stupidity and or ignorance that keeps us voting Democrat (which I will do until the day I die), it is the ignorance of the Republican party that believes it can continue to survive off the goodwill of Whites. It refuses to change with the times. It refuses to change its message to be more inclusive of other groups. It refuses to reach out to others.Instead of simply reaching out to more Latinos, as they make a large part of the population, it seeks to restrict immigration in this country. Unbelievable. The Republican party started to make inroads with the Latino population under George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” but the populism of the Tea Party took root and they became demonized. We went from a president who could speak pretty good Spanish to a guy who thinks Taco bowls being served in his hotel shows his dedication to an entire group of people.Sigh.You really think that it’s entitlements that keep us voting Blue? It’s THAT BS that keeps us pulling the lever for Blue. Sure, the Democrats are not perfect but they have many things going for them, and one of them is THEY AREN’T REPUBLICANS.Until the Republican party realizes this, they’ll be lost. The party is dead. And it’s a crying shame too.But the worst wounds are the ones that are self-inflicted, my mother always said.She was right. She’s a staunch Democrat.

There’s no smoking gun answer for this, it’s a multitude of social changes converging at once. What’s going on with our generation isn’t anything special, this has happened in countless other generations. Below you’ll find a few reasons and of course, I could be way off base, so the following is just my opinion. I’ll start with the Unabomber.We are being forced to define our own lives, and it’s pretty damn tough to do.The following is from Peter Thiels Zero To One.Most people act as if there were no secrets left to find. An extreme representative of this view is Ted Kaczynski, infamously known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski was a child prodigy who enrolled at Harvard at 16. He went on to get a PhD in math and become a professor at UC Berkeley. But you’ve only ever heard of him because of the 17‐year terror campaign he waged with pipe bombs against professors, technologists, and businesspeople.In late 1995, the authorities didn’t know who or where the Unabomber was. The biggest clue was a 35,000‐word manifesto that Kaczynski had written and anonymously mailed to the press. The FBI asked some prominent newspapers to publish it, hoping for a break in the case. It worked: Kaczynski’s brother recognized his writing style and turned him in.You might expect that writing style to have shown obvious signs of insanity, but the manifesto is eerily cogent. Kaczynski claimed that in order to be happy, every individual “needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.” He divided human goals into three groups:Goals that can be satisfied with minimal effort;Goals that can be satisfied with serious effort; andGoals that cannot be satisfied, no matter how much effort one makes.This is the classic trichotomy of the easy, the hard, and the impossible. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done. So Kaczynski’s idea was to destroy existing institutions, get rid of all technology, and let people start over and work on hard problems anew.Kaczynski’s methods were crazy, but his loss of faith in the technological frontier is all around us. Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.No sense of shared sacrifice.As humans we are social animals, we strive for being part of our tribe where we can help others and sacrifice for who we care for. Unfortunately, we don’t have much to sacrifice for in our generation. Most of the major social and economic battles were fought and won in the 20th century. Sure we have things to still fix in our society, but we don’t have an existential crisis such as the depression, WW2, Vietnam, or civil rights to motivate us to sacrifice for something greater.Life, in general, is too easy. We have food. Shelter and job opportunities to survive. We aren’t facing an economic depression leading to mass starvation and suffering. So life is good materially, but we aren’t facing true stressors that cure the self-centeredness that allows us to focus on helping our community and making us feel worthwhile because we are needed by the community.From Sebastian Junger’s Tribes:There was an earthquake in Avezzano, Italy in the early part of the 20th century, and the earthquake killed something like 90 percent of the inhabitants. Something like that, it was absolutely ghastly.And one of the survivors wrote — “The earthquake produced what the law promises, but does not deliver. The equality of all men.”The survivors, noblemen, peasants, everybody, they had to band together to survive. And no social distinctions were made, for a little while there was a kind of, a utopia of hardship, where everyone was the same and everyone needed each other. We saw that in, I’m from New York, and we saw that in New York after 9/11.We are constantly reminded where we stand in the pecking order. Be it click bait like 25 under 25, 30 under 30, 40 under 40, 1000 under 1000. All of these lists keep bashing into our heads we are unworthy.It doesn’t stop there. We can instantly calculate our net-worth via mint. See how much our stocks are worth via Robinhood. Count how many people liked our facebook posts. And check how many recruiters are stalking us on Linkedin. We are constantly being shown where we rank in the pecking order and it has terrible consequences on our psyche.Too many people are sharing their fake lives on social media and sadly people are buying into them.Normal people’s lives are being broadcasted on social media which now creates competition between the ranks of noncelebrities. Previous generations would only see stars on the news, these people were almost deified. You didn’t compare yourself to these people because they were almost on another plane of existence, so your ego would be protected. All you would care about is how you ranked within your small town.In the modern age, you see people from around the world bragging about their lives and how good things are, which has negative psychological effects on your well being such as social envy. This creates comparisons and hyper competitions which is terrible for your social health.One example is depression rates with teenage girls and the correlation, maybe causation with social media exposureStrangers are voicing their opinions and liking/disliking our work and sadly we care about that. If you were walking down the street and some random person came up to and said, “I read your story about your vacation and I think it sucks.” A healthy reaction would be to ignore this person and continue walking. Yet, when we post things on social media we crave the likes and upvotes built into this addicting technology. We care what random strangers think of our work. We think that their validation will somehow make our lives better. Sadly even when do get the upvotes, it does nothing for us.We spend too much time paying attention to the wrong things and not enough time paying attention to ourselves.As I wrote in my answer to What can I do in my 20s that will benefit my future self personally and professionally?, we don’t spend enough time on reflecting on how we can be better people, we focus more on the problems covered in the national news:37 Novels worth of news per yearBut how many of those stories are rehash of other stories? How much of that information is inaccurate? How much of that information doesn’t effect you or is just pure speculation? How many of those stories are telling you what you want to hear? Finally, what’s the shelf life of that news? Will the information you’re reading now matter 1 month, 1 year, or 10 years from now?So you read 37 novels worth of news, but if you head over to Wikipedia and read a news summary of what happened in the US in 2017, it’s only about 8,000 words or 15% of one novel. What gives? To beat a dead horse, most news is filler and waste of your time.What do you gain by doing this?Now, what if instead, you focused on reading quality books about events after they have transpired and are fully understood? Better yet, how about you read books that feed your: spirit (how you see the world and relate to it), your mind (how you think), and your career (how you create value in this world). How much better would your life be if you could read 30+ more books per year? And if you’re 20, by the time you’re 30 you would have finished 300 books!Develop heightened listening skills. You’ll be happier. And you’ll be able to think clearer and work on your own projects.What’s interesting about decreasing how much news you read is you’ll find yourself listening to people more often and becoming a better connector, which helps you to develop a stronger network. You won’t be bombarded by depressing news you can’t control. Finally, you can focus on your work and making yourself a better person so you can do good in the world.It doesn’t mean you become a monk. Sure, continue reading the news, but next time you open another story about how terrible Trump is or how horrible the democrats are, ask yourself if you’re better off reading the news or cracking open a book that actually makes you think?Falling birth rates creates Over-investment in children.During the early 20th century the average American family was having around 3 kids. Now we are having somewhere around 1.9. We have smaller families, we have a lot more single child households than before, and the fewer kids you have parents tend to over-invest in that child. Your great-grandparents didn't have the time to micromanage your grandpa because your grandpa had 3–4 brothers and sisters. This allowed your grandpa to have a life of his own. He could play freely. Adventure throughout the town and his family wasn’t worried about the boogie man. Back in the 1950s, my grandpa would let my seven year old dad roam the streets of Los Gatos alone looking for work or fun things to do.In today’s day age every parent is paranoid about the worst possible events happing to their one and only child. Your child has zero freedom. He can’t go around town to play with his friends. He is overbooked with after-school programs and preparing for college at the age of 10. Parents are hyper paranoid about any possible danger happening to their child. There's no time to be a child. Our children are suffering from over-parenting.…which leads to an inflated ego that gets hurt when you face a world that you’re not the center of. If you’re whole entire life you’re being told you’re the best and special, and then when you enter the workforce to learn you can’t find a good job and you aren’t the center of the universe, that’s a tough blow. At insult to injury when you see your peers living the “fake good life” on social media.Snowflake syndrome.Because we overprotect our children, they have zero coping skills for the ups and downs of life. We mistakenly thought that if we build a bubble around our kids, it will protect them. Unfortunately, this bubble is broken once our children face reality. When the bubble bursts it costs a host of mental issues. It would have been better if we allowed our kids to face adversity early so they can develop coping skills. Just like a muscle, a human mind needs a bit of stress/challenge in order to grow stronger. Nassim Taleh would say humans are antifragile, meaning we become stronger through adversity, not avoiding it. There is such a thing as too much adversity and science has shown it can cause anxiety for children, but that's in the case of child abuse or a destructive household. The type of adversity I'm talking about is letting your child adventure in life and fail. Letting your child see a part of the world that doesn't equate with the bubble parents have surrounded her in. Letting your child go with out certain wants.Research has shown that US immigrants have better mental health than Americans, and immigrant children over the age of 12 have better mental health than American children. Maybe because families from Syria or Venezlua know what true suffering is and realize how great things are in America compared to the third world.Replacement of strong social structures with weak superficial structures. One quora poster wrote a great post on What is something that needs to be said that nobody wants to hear? He begins his post with a reference to Fiddler on the Roof.Remember Tevye's opening monologue? And the opening number, “Tradition”?I’m talking about the bit that begins at 2:24 specifically. The part where Tevye says, “But it’s a tradition. And because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”Whoa.Hold on a minute, there.That’s deep.“Every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”If there are two questions which, in my personal opinion, are driving Millennials insane, herding us into suicidal depressions, and making us possibly the most miserable generation since the Exodus, it’s these.Religion isn’t the end all be all, but it’s a network people can draw upon for strength and direction, which is badly needed in our modern world. Some people are super independent and don't need this, but for others, religious institutions served as a place where people could find meaning and a community to make their lives easier. Back in ancient times, if you were a Christian traveling to a foreign country the first thing you would do upon arrival is look for a church. In there you would find fellow worshippers that have the commonality of a shared faith. This would build a bridge allowing you to connect with them. The worshippers would introduce you to the right people, tell you were to sleep, shop, eat, and who to avoid. And most importantly they would protect you.But more importantly, religion makes you feel that you are not just one in seven billion, but you are part of something more and have a special mission to fulfill. It’s a much more compelling story than being a small organism on a small rock located in a gigantic universe.As time went on, we slowly broke religious institutions down from the outside (enlightenment) and inside (religious institution mismanagement through corruption), but as Jung says, “You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.” Some people have a gap in their lives that these institutions used to fill and now they must be filled with something else. But unfortunately it takes a lot of hard work to find meaning in your life, so instead, people find new gods: money, achievement, and ego. But unfortunately, these new gods are based on superficial goals that will never sate your hunger for more. Think of anything you have wanted and then obtained. As soon as you obtain it, you get a quick after glow of success, but then as General Patton said:“For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”Entering the job market in the depths of the recession.As mentioned in my answer to What do you think will change in 2019?We just recovered from one of the worst financial disasters since the depression. Because of this, most millennials (gags at saying the word, I'm going with gen Y now) entered a terrible jobs market saddled with debt. Gen Y isn’t CHOOSING to not buy a home, they are being forced to due to their financial decisions.When you’re told the sky is the limit for your career, and now you can’t find work that lives up to those standards, you’re in for a world of pain.Increasing rates of student loan debt are preventing Gen Yers from buying homes or spending on current needsAccording to CNBC:Federal Reserve economists studied the impact that the $1.5 trillion in educated-related loans is having on those aged 24 to 32. They found that while it is not the principal contributor to the decline in housing purchases, it is playing a significant role."In surveys, young adults commonly report that their student loan debts are preventing them from buying a home," Fed researchers Alvaro Mezza, Daniel Ringo, and Kamila Sommer said in a paper released Wednesday. "Our estimates suggest that increases in student loan debt are an important factor in explaining their lowered homeownership rates, but not the central cause of the decline."Home ownership among all Americans for the study period declined 4 percentage points, from a peak of 69 percent in 2005 to a trough of 65 percent in 2014. However, the decline was much more pronounced among those in the 24-to-32 group, which saw a plunge from 45 percent to 36 percent.Upward mobility isn’t as easy as it used to be.Back in our parents days, nonstem college degrees had much more value than they do now. Being people with college educations weren’t as prevalent back then as they are now, a college graduate had much more opportunities to find stable white-collar employment that provided them with decent pay, healthcare, and the ability to buy a home. Now, most non-stem college students find themselves in temporary work with wages that aren’t providing them with the same opportunities their parents had.According to an Atlantic article:Carr and Wiemers used data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which tracks individual workers’ earnings, to examine how earnings mobility changed between 1981 and 2008. They ranked people into deciles, meaning that one group fell below the 10th percentile of earnings, another between the 10th and 20th, and so on; then they measured someone’s chances of moving from one decile to another. But the researchers wanted to see not just the probability of moving to a different income bracket over the course of a career, but also how that probability has changed over time. So they measured a given worker’s chances of moving between deciles ​during two periods​, one from 1981 to 1996 and another from 1993 to 2008.​They found quite a disparity. “The probability of ending where you start has gone up, and the probability of moving up from where you start has gone down,” Carr said. For instance, the chance that someone starting in the bottom 10 percent would move above the 40th percentile decreased by 16 percent. The chance that someone starting in the middle of the earnings distribution would reach one of the top two earnings deciles decreased by 20 percent. Yet people who started in the seventh decile are 12 percent more likely to end up in the fifth or sixth decile—a drop in earnings—than they used to be.No mandatory tour of duty to serve your country (militarily or socially).In the 1970s the US ended the draft. And while this was celebrated as an achievement, it missed one vital point. Yes, our young people shouldn’t be forced into the armed services, but should our young people have a responsibility to complete some sort of social mission to reinvigorate the republic and their appreciation for our country?From Sir Jogn Glubb’s “The Fate Of Empires”:There does not appear to be any doubt that money is the agent which causes the decline of this strong, brave and self-confident people. The decline in courage, enterprise and a sense of duty is, however, gradual.The first direction in which wealth injures the nation is a moral one. Money replaces honour and adventure as the objective of the best young men. Moreover, men do not normally seek to make money for their country or their community, but for themselves. Gradually, and almost imperceptibly, the Age of Affluence silences the voice of duty. The object of the young and the ambitious is no longer fame, honour or service, but cash….But how can we turn this around? How can we find meaning in our lives?I believe all of these problems are solvable but it just takes work and dedication. I wrote an extended piece on how to overcome the issues I mentioned in What is life’s biggest "trap" people fall into and Can you share some life hacks that might help to overcome feeling useless and inferior? If you’re interested in learning more about what you can struggle better in life, check out my other Quora answers and life tips.

YES! ABSOLUTELY! NO DOUBT IT! JUST DO IT!IT’S ONE OF THE BEST INVESTMENTS YOU WILL EVER MAKE IN YOUR LIFE!As they say, “knowledge is power”. This is absolutely true when it comes to buying a home.Do your research, and you will see there is always a way! Even if you don’t have a lot of savings.But there are a lot of other programs as well!(More on that later…)Suggestion: Get a residential multi-unit property (2, 3, and up to 4 units on one property/deed). Live in one unit, and rent out the rest. This is a great way to possibly live for free now… and build equity into a property you can use in retirement.Tips:If self employed, and not showing a lot of income on your tax returns… either you or a spouse may want to get a W2 paying job (that shows at least a two year history in the same profession). Those can be broad however… like sales, marketing, accounting, teacher, etc… (you may be able to get away with only showing a couple of weeks or one month of paystubs, as long as the “industry” or nature of the job is the same for at least two years.)Get a credit report to see what your score is, and clean up or challenge any wrong or derogatory accounts. Some companies will also give you a report showing you how to raise your credit score.If you don’t have a lot of credit, try getting added to a family member’s account, open and use some small credit accounts (like a gas card), that you pay off each month (if you have some time to prepare). You can even try getting some alternative credit added to your credit report, like an annual pest control account, gym membership, utilities, etc…Be prepared to show the last 12 months rent history (cancelled checks, monthly bank statements, or a verification of rent form which the lender will send out.)Don’t make any large purchases after you have applied for a mortgage until the loan is closed.If your company pays for your car, you co-signed for a loan, or your child pays for their own student loans, get 6 months proof, so those debts don’t count against you.If married, and one spouse has poor credit… only apply with the good one. Depending on the program, you may also be able to use a “non-occupying” co-borrower (such as a parent). However, all borrower’s combined income must be able to carry the new home debt.Ok.. with that out of the way, get busy!To find out more about the programs and grants available to you, such as this one…#7 NACA ProgramNACA stands for the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, which is a nonprofit, homeownership, and community advocacy organization. Cedric Stewart, a 13-year veteran Residential & Commercial Sales Consultant at Entourage RG at Keller Williams says, “It’s a 100% financing program (no down payment) that offers a loan product which could be described as a conventional loan hybrid by way of a non-profit.”The program offers more than just 100% financing; it also has no closing costs, no fees, no requirement for perfect credit, and low-interest rates. It sounds good, and it is, but Stewart says, “The process by which to purchase a home with the loan is arduous, to say the least.”Stewart explains, “Steps include attending a large information-based workshop, scheduling an initial intake appointment (usually months later), three months of payment shock (when you show you can save your proposed mortgage payment for three consecutive months), a follow-up appointment with an assigned counselor, and a final home buying workshop (at this workshop you’ll receive a letter that allows you to go shopping for a home).”While this program is certainly helpful, it won’t be good if you want to buy a home with any sense of urgency. Learn more about the program here. If you do decide to utilize it, Stewart advises, “Working exclusively with Realtors who know the program is one of the keys to success that are recommended to prospective buyers when they attend the workshops.”He adds, “A Realtor seasoned in dealing with the program can explain the process to the listing agent that’s afraid to accept the offer because they’ve never heard of the program. They can also manage both sides of the process and handle all of the inevitable challenges that arise.”Check out the links below which contain additional vital information:(You won’t be sorry!)13 Programs for First-Time Home Buyers | SuperMoney!How to Buy a House with the National Homebuyers Fund - Low Income Relief6 First-Time Homebuyer Grants and Programs That Will Get You Into a Home Sooner | Student Loan Her(Although I owned a mortgage company for 10 years, and have 20 year’s experience in the lending industry… please make sure to speak with an experienced Mortgage company or broker for more guidance.However, I have seen time and time again, where determined people who want to buy a home, will get there. There may be hoops to jump through, some planning to do, some frustration and angst… but somehow it all comes together in the end. Have faith! There’s nothing like the feeling you get when someone places the key to your own little piece of America, right into your hands.)Good luck and God bless!