Loan Program Aids First-Time Home Buyers : Fillmore: Under new program, renters are becoming owners sooner than they had expected. Redevelopment Agency offers up to $25,000.
Paul Mithra of Fillmore has been paying rent for as long as he can remember.
He makes a good living producing computer software at a West Los Angeles company, but he could never scrape up the down payment for a house of his own.
All that changed early this summer when Mithra read a newspaper ad announcing Fillmore’s new down-payment assistance program for first-time home buyers.
These days, instead of writing a rent check, he pays a monthly mortgage on a century-old frame house just blocks from where his two daughters attend school.
“I wasn’t anticipating buying a home any time soon,” said Mithra, 40, who was loaned almost $21,000 under the program. “I expected it would have had to be another 10 years away.”
Mithra is one of five home buyers who so far have qualified for Fillmore’s down payment program, a Redevelopment Agency-funded effort that pays up to $25,000 of the purchase price of a first home.
City officials call the program an innovative way to keep Fillmore’s young people in town and get families into their own homes.
“There’s a high percentage of renters and it’s hard to get the down payment,” said Doug Kubik, Fillmore’s housing officer.
“Ten percent (down payment) is typically what banks are looking at, and that’s 13 grand, plus all your fees,” Kubik said. “That’s a hard swing for many people.”
Under the assistance program, qualified buyers receive 15% or $25,000, whichever is lower, to help with their down payment. But they still must come up with another 5% of the selling price and find their own lenders.
If the buyers live in the house for 30 years or longer, the money need never be paid back, Kubik said. But if they sell the home within that time, the city gets its money back plus 15% of the net equity, he said.
“We’re not really trying to make money,” Kubik said. “Every time we get money back, it will return to the agency.”
City Manager Roy Payne said the agency has about $400,000 to lend to qualified buyers this year--enough for 16 or more first-time home buyers. More than 40 families have already applied to the program.
“These are people who are buying a first house, who have the monthly income to make the payments, but they’re not able to save up the down payment that’s required,” Payne said.
To qualify, families must purchase a house in Fillmore, earn a household income defined by the federal government as low or moderate, and maintain the home as their primary residence.
It is a program geared to moderate-income families, officials said. For example, a family of four can earn up to $66,250 a year and still qualify, Kubik said.
The assistance is offered on a first-come, first-served basis to ensure that everyone has a fair chance at qualifying.
“But we have it prioritized so that people who have lived here for a year or longer get first priority,” Kubik said. “The second priority is working in Fillmore, the third is living within the school district’s boundaries and the fourth is everyone else.”
The Fillmore City Council launched the assistance program earlier this year, in part to abide by a state law requiring that 20% of all Redevelopment Agency money be spent on low- or moderate-income housing.
“It’s giving the people in Fillmore a chance to remain here, so as they grow up, they don’t have to move out of town,” said Councilman Scott Lee, who sits on the loan review committee. “It’s also helping the city in the sense that . . . we’re able to create a market for houses and that helps our economy.”
Councilman Don Gunderson said the program complements other city efforts to meet the housing needs of low- and middle-income residents.
“It’s one of about three thrusts that are going on in Fillmore,” Gunderson said. “The others are the rehabilitation of existing units and building affordable apartments.”
Payne said Fillmore budgeted about $80,000 this year to repair substandard housing and has more than $300,000 set aside to help finance a low-income apartment complex.
Fillmore is Ventura County’s poorest city, with a per-capita income of $10,674, according to the 1990 U. S. census.
And 38% of the homes in Fillmore are rented, compared with the county average of 34.5%. It is those people that the first-time home buyers program seeks to attract.
“There’s a lot of people in Fillmore that wouldn’t otherwise be in a position to buy a house without that program,” said Steve McKinnon, the owner of Fillmore Real Estate.
“This is economically better for them, the sellers and the local real estate industry,” he said.
Next year, Payne said, the Redevelopment Agency funds will drop from $400,000 to $200,000.
“It may end after next year, or it may be reduced,” Payne said of the home-buying program.
None of that, however, matters to Mithra, who for the first time in his life relishes the idea of paying property taxes.
“The fact that they focus this program on more middle-income families was hugely important for me,” he said. “Fillmore seems to involve itself in a number of positive programs to build up the community.”
