Business
Kim Arrington, Branch Manager of the New American Funding metro Atlanta office, joins the Atlanta Real Estate Forum podcast to discuss educating homebuyers on being mortgage ready and new diversity initiatives, highlighting the New American Dream Initiative. She joins hosts Carol Morgan and Todd Schnick for the All About Real Estate segment. Arrington has a great passion for helping homeowners find an affordable path forward, but lately, she’s been asking how can New American Funding assist minority buyers. This past year, NAF placed great emphasis on financial literacy, holding workshops on budgeting and how to plan and become mortgage-ready. The main goal is to make sure homebuyers are spending their money wisely while becoming more credit-ready to handle purchasing a home to ensure sustainability in the home. There are 3.4 million mortgage-ready individuals in the United States who are not purchasing a property because they don’t know the next appropriate step. Helping college graduates, for example, understand the power of their diploma and work history is especially important. “The pandemic was a great experience to go through and say, ‘Were we doing a good job with that? How many of our minority borrowers suffered and needed assistance to maintain the home or even experienced an early payment default or foreclosure?” said Arrington when discussing opportunities for diversity growth at New American Funding. Through new initiatives, New American Funding has seen a lot of success in making sure consumers are educated. Taking in-house programs about down payment assistance and layering them with a homebuyer education piece is successful and has the added flexibility of learning at home or online for convenience. The essential point is ensuring borrowers understand payment, budgeting, what to do after buying a home and how to remit and stay on track with payments. The next part of the initiative is to look at communities. Recently, New American Funding was invited to Henry County to speak about financial literacy and home affordability options. From that experience, it was decided that offering more ongoing financial literacy courses at their facility in Henry County would be very beneficial. “If we can be planted and continue to educate a group in one community at a time, we’re empowering them.” Said Arrington. There are many aspects of a home buying experience, such as banking principles, that people may not know if they are a person of color. Often, minority buyers come to a lender with a chime card or reveal they are not using a bank for their finances. It is common for minorities to use popular celebrity business cards to track their finances instead of using more traditional avenues. To a lender or originator who is not savvy to the intricate aspects and experiences of being a person of color, they might receive an application and immediately develop an unaware bias that a minority borrower cannot afford during this process. Arrington commented, “My job as a lender that is a part of that community is to have that conversation.” A lending officer wants to understand how a borrower spends their money and that there are no outstanding bills on a credit report to ensure they can afford to make the mortgage payment. The conversation is different with non-minority buyers because they have easier access to financial literacy education. Having a conversation that resonates with the consumer to help them be successful in accomplishing their goal of homeownership is key. New American Funding also has very positive relationships with home builders and a high number of people who come out of the builder communities are people of color. Consumer surveys question what the experience and going process was like and the responses in the past year revealed how all experiences were not 100% pleasant due to many not understanding the process. Revealing this on the back end showed weaknesses and a great need to bette...