Photo courtesy of Will County
One of dozens of homes Will County has successfully acquired, rehabbed, and/or resold through its successful Neighborhood Stabilization Program.
By Tim Mack - May 17, 2011
Tim Mack has been a member of Will County’s Community Development Division since 2007, specializing in grant financial management for CDBG, HOME, and LEAD. He assumed the program management role for the county's Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) with its inception in 2008. He also has 10-plus years of personal experience in real estate investing.
In this blog post, Mack provides his perspective on what's making Will County's NSP program a success.
As a result of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA), Will County was awarded a $5.16 million grant to help stabilize communities through the acquisition, rehabilitation, and re-sale of foreclosed properties to eligible home owners. Based on the legislative requirements established, we designed a program that would maximize positive impact to the communities while minimizing risk to the County.
With those two fundamental goals in mind, we made the strategic decision to forge a “buyer-centric” homeownership program. The idea was that we would not purchase a home unless we had an associated buyer ready to purchase post-rehabilitation.
One of dozens of homes Will County has successfully acquired, rehabbed, and/or resold through its successful Neighborhood Stabilization Program.
Photo courtesy of Will County
The key to our success has been the partnerships we’ve built to assist us in the numerous phases of this project. We have leveraged relationships developed from previous grant activities for delivery of construction, housing counseling, and insurance services. We procured local appraisers and other professional services firms needed in various phases of a home transaction. All of these partners have played a great role in our progress. However, the alliances built with area Realtors has been the most critical driver to our success.
The ability to attract a steady supply of buyers has been essential. To that end, the efforts of Tom Joseph and Three Rivers Realtors Association have provided the initial and ongoing thrust to provide the supply of ready, willing, and able buyers to fuel our program.
To make intelligent acquisitions, we identified two firms with extensive experience and success working with foreclosure acquisition/disposition through an extensive procurement search. Dow Realty and Coldwell Banker Residential have been instrumental in helping us buy and market right. Their expertise has saved us thousands of dollars in unnecessary acquisitions costs.
To date this approach has served us well, by allowing us to obligate more than 150 percent of our original grant and more than double the initial projections for acquisitions. We acquired the first homes in October 2009. Since then, we have acquired 54 properties and completed the rehab/resale of 42 homes. In the process we have generated more than $3.3 million in program income which is being reinvested in the community. By July 2013, we’ll have acquired, rehabilitated, and/or re-sold more than 100 homes in Will County and generated a return of $8 million in program income – all from an original seed grant of $5.16 million!
If you would be interested in hearing more about Will County’s NSP program or would like to discuss design strategies that can take your program to the next level, feel free to contact me: Tim Mack, Will County NSP Program Manager. Direct line: (815) 774-7892, email: tmack@willcountylanduse.com.