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Homes Within Reach in the News ...

Last update: January 16, 2007 – 9:20 AM
Editor's Corner: Woman finds Homes Within Reach

Kelly Anderson got her best Christmas gift ever on Dec. 19.
Sam Barnes

Kelly Anderson got her best Christmas gift ever on Dec. 19, a house.

"I'd been trying to buy a home for years," says the 29-year-old single mom and office manager. She'd gone to homebuyers' classes and dreamed of a place for herself and her three children, ages 7, 3 and 10 weeks.

Then she happened upon an information session of "Homes Within Reach," also known as the West Hennepin Affordable Housing Land Trust.

Homes Within Reach buys and builds houses and then sells them to eligible buyers at well below market prices for similar properties. It's able to do so by holding onto the title to the land and selling only the house itself.

As a result, Anderson was able to buy a 40-year-old three-bedroom home in Minnetonka which she figures is worth $300,000 for $146,000. "My total out-of pocket was $2,115" at closing, she says. She now pays a monthly mortgage of
$1,077, plus $30 a month to lease the land from Homes Within Reach.

"For what I could qualify for, I could afford maybe a townhouse -- at the very most," Anderson says. And even that would have been a stretch, she says, because it would have cost about $190,000. "I would have really had to push
myself for that."

Now, she has more space, plus a yard, for her children, and in a "perfect location" -- right across the street from an elementary school.

"I've been blessed," she says.

Homes Within Reach plans to make at least 16 more families happy homeowners during the coming year, and it's conducting informational meetings across the west metro now to find would-be buyers.

To qualify, a family must have a gross income of less than 80 percent of metro Hennepin County's average household income, based on family size. A family of four with a gross income of $59,600 would qualify, says Doris Gruis, project
manager for Homes Within Reach.

Gruis says the homes that will be available this year are in places like Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Edina, St. Louis Park and Golden Valley. More than half will be brand-new homes.

The organization now has about 15 potential buyers actively pursuing homes. "Some of them it will probably take a year to get there," she says, as they try to get their credit and finances in order. In the meantime, more houses will be
coming available. Homes Within Reach funds its work with grants from public and private sources, including Hennepin County.

The first step in buying a home is to attend an informational meeting. That's how it all began for Anderson.

After making initial contact with Gruis and learning that she was eligible for the program, she spent more than a year getting her finances and credit in order so she could get bank approval on a loan.

Then in October she made her move. "Literally, I did the application [with Homes Within Reach], and I got a response within a day." She submitted her application to a bank and was approved for a loan within a couple more days.

"Not a week later, I picked out the house," she says, and "it's beautiful. ... This house is amazing -- two fireplaces and a two-car garage. We even saw three deer walk across our yard the other day."

It's a dream come true for the Mankato native and her family. "When my mother first visited the house, she left crying, she was so proud of me. And she was kind of feeling sad, too, that she was not able to do that for me when I was a
child. They always rented."

Last year, Anderson had experienced some of those same emotions when her son had written a letter to Santa saying he wanted a house for his family. "My motivation was to get these kids a house as soon as possible," she says.

This Christmas, she succeeded.

5101 Thimsen Avenue, Suite 200 Tel 952-401-7071

Minnetonka, MN 55345 Fax 952-224-2857

Last modified: 08/14/07