ANAHEIM : First-Time Buyers Get City Help

Alfredo and Ana Lagunas always dreamed of the day they could leave the one-bedroom apartment where they had raised four children and move to a home of their own.

After 13 years of saving and living in the Jeffrey-Lynne neighborhood behind the Disneyland Hotel, the family’s dream has come true through the city’s new first-time home-buyer program.

“All these rooms, we’re almost lost in here,” said Alfredo Lagunas, 39, as he looked around the spacious living room of the $167,000, three-bedroom home where the family moved last month. “Sometimes it’s too much room, and we feel kind of strange.”

He said the front room of the house is about the size of the entire $565-a-month apartment the family rented for seven years and larger than the other apartments in Jeffrey-Lynne they had rented before that.

Even though the couple’s four sons, ages 5 to 13, have two bedrooms to share, they often sneak off to spend the nights together in one room because it feels more like home.

And Ana Lagunas says she catches herself shoving things in drawers and corners, forgetting that she has many closets in her new home.

Though it may take some getting used to, the Lagunases say they are happy about their move to a quiet street in central Anaheim and hope friends and former neighbors will learn about the program and do the same.

“When you come to a new country, you feel confused. Sometimes you just need someone to say, ‘Here, this is how you do it,’ ” said Alfredo Lagunas, who works as a cook in a nearby hotel. “Sometimes a few simple words help a lot.”

Many residents of Jeffrey-Lynne and other neighborhoods are originally from Latin America, where some were professionals and many say they once owned homes.

However, the expensive Orange County housing market is beyond the reach of their minimum-wage incomes in the United States.

Though the Lagunas family had looked into different home-buying programs over the years, their small savings and lack of credit made it impossible for them to qualify for large loans.

But Ana Lagunas, 39, who works as an aide for a day-care center in Placentia, learned of the city’s new program through Anita Castro-Zvoda, director of the center.

“How many families out there are literally squirreling away their money and don’t realize this program is out there?” Castro-Zvoda said. “They think that they need so much money to buy a home here that it will never happen, and that’s just not true.”

The program combines a loan of up to $25,000 from the city plus a mortgage credit certificate that can then be used to help pay monthly house payments.

The program also offers loans to buyers from various lenders at interest rates that average about 8%. The program is available to first-time home buyers who are able to raise 5% for the down payment and who purchase homes in the area bordered by La Palma Avenue, South Street, East Street and West Street.

The program is restricted to those whose maximum family income level does not exceed 120% of the county median--$58,900 for a family of four and $68,350 for a family of six. However, many banks offering loans for the program require that maximum incomes not exceed 80% of the county median, which would be just under $40,000 for a family larger than three.

Santa Ana and Garden Grove also offer similar programs for first-time home buyers.

“I hope that the cities maintain their commitment to these programs because they are making a difference,” said Ross Romero, a real estate agent who sold the Lagunas family their home and who is active in Los Amigos of Orange County, an Anaheim-based Latino business group. “They are very important.”