A Moving Experience

Anxiety sank in just weeks before Nathan and Kari Briggs closed on their new house. As first time homebuyers the seemingly distant closing date crept up fast, leaving Kari fretting over the logistics of the move.

"I worried and worried over how I was possibly going to move everything in and get the house ready all by myself," said Kari. "We both work, and as timing would have it, Nathan started school just days before we got the keys to our house."

Then a startling call came just in time to save Kari's sanity. It was from Buyers Fund-Neighborhood Gold, the nonprofit organization that provided the Briggs with a down payment grant for their home. They informed the Briggs that they were the 100,000th grant recipient.

"At first I wondered what being the 100,000th grant recipient meant, and then when I heard all that was involved I thought this is too good to be true," said Kari.

The 100,000th grant recipient meant not only receiving a grant for the down payment of their home, but a plethora of other bonuses.

On Thursday the employees of Buyers Fund-Neighborhood Gold, along with numerous community sponsors, helped the Briggs move everything into their new home, provided paint and painting supplies, spruced up their already beautiful yard with fall flowers, and presented over $200 in Home Depot gift cards to go towards a new fence. This daunting one-family task was accomplished in one day.

"It was amazing to see the employees of Buyers Fund- Neighborhood Gold do so much for us when they already gave us a grant that helped us to purchase our home." said Nathan.

In just under six years, Buyers Fund-Neighborhood Gold, a leader in the down payment assistance industry, hit the 100,000 mark. Using census figures for the nation's average family size, that would put the number of people helped into a home at over 250,000 individuals.

"We gave just six grants to people that needed help purchasing homes in our first month of business, and now five in a half years and over $490 million in grant money later we've been able to assist 100,000 more buyers with down payment grants," said David Ahrens, Buyers Fund-Neighborhood Gold's CEO. "These grants change the lives of real people and we wanted to associate these numbers with faces and offer a helping hand to one of the families we've helped.

Buyers Fund-Neighborhood Gold was established in 1999 to help qualified homebuyers eliminate the biggest obstacle towards homeownership, the down payment. Removing this obstacle has resulted in over $12 billion in real estate transactions nationwide, helping hopeful homeowners reap the benefits of homeownership sometimes years ahead of their original expectations.

As for the Briggs family, who were just married in April, they are looking forward to life as homeowners.

"It's just incredibly exciting," sighed Kari as she looked at her new home. "I think back on how we were so discouraged that we would never find that perfect home and now here it is. We love it and everything about it."