Scores of prospective buyers have benefited from the annual Home Ownership for People Everywhere Expo. This year's expo will bring together home inspectors, insurance agencies, nonprofit assistance programs, lenders and many others on June 21.
By JUDY STARK
Published June 14, 2003
[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
Cheryl Stephens bought this Clearwater townhouse in January after attending a HOPE Expo. “There was just a mountainful of informative tips for yourself, things to know that nobody else will tell you,” she says of the expo.
Cheryl Stephens moved to Pinellas County several years ago from Plattsburgh, N.Y., where she owned a hair salon, happy to get out of the cold but bringing with her enormous debt. A credit counselor who looked over her situation threw up his hands and said he couldn't help her.
Fueled by coffee and a sense of responsibility ("I made the bills, I'll pay the bills"), she spent three years working herself out of debt - for a while she worked two full-time jobs - ignoring the suggestion of friends that she declare bankruptcy.
"It taught me a lot of humility. It was a hard road," said Stephens, who said she was so broke she didn't have $5 to rent a video. She now works in sales for Home Shopping Network.
Last spring, out of debt and eager to become a homeowner, she attended the annual Home Ownership for People Everywhere Expo. This is an annual free fair put on by the nonprofit Community Service Foundation of Clearwater where businesses and nonprofits involved in housing set up booths and tables, talk with prospective buyers and hand out information. Daylong classes are offered to teach participants the ins and outs of home buying.
This year's HOPE Expo is June 21 at Largo Cultural Center.
"There was so much that you learned!" Stephens said last week. "You don't know what you don't know until you go. There was just a mountainful of informative tips for yourself, things to know that nobody else will tell you. I was very grateful. I came out of there smiling, feeling good inside, thinking, "I'm equipped, I'm ready now.' "
She linked up with a first-time buyer program that provided down payment and closing-cost help, and late last year she closed on a two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse with 1,017 square feet in Clearwater for which she paid $84,500.
The organizers of the HOPE Expo like to think of it as "an all-inclusive resort, with everything under one roof," said Carrie Vitale, a committee member and vice president at the nonprofit Tampa Bay Community Development Corp., which helps people of low and moderate incomes become homeowners. "The process of buying a home can be so stressful, but here they can find an inspector, or a lender, or figure out which assistance programs they qualify for, and take the class, and can do it all in one day."
About 500 people attended last year's expo, and the organizers are hoping for at least that many this year. Thirty-two vendors have signed up for the exhibit hall: real estate agents, home inspectors, insurance agencies, nonprofit assistance programs, city housing agencies, lenders. ("No predatory lenders" - those who charge high interest rates for borrowers with low incomes or blemished credit - Vitale emphasized.)
Typically, many of those who visit the exhibit hall or take the home-buying class are first-time buyers. But last year, Vitale said, "we had people who were looking to refinance. We've got a whole bunch of lenders under one roof, and they could go from table to table and say, "What can you do for me?' "
The exhibit hall is open from 8:15 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and visitors are welcome to cruise the tables and talk with vendors even if they don't take the home buyer class. (The name of the expo, she points out, is Home Ownership for People Everywhere, and participants from all over the Tampa Bay area and with all income levels are welcome.)
"It minimizes the stress level of making contact," Vitale said.
Other participants are longtime homeowners who take the class to bring themselves up to date on home buying. The class runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with a lunch break. Those who stay all day earn the certificate that many lenders require for participation in down payment and closing-cost assistance programs. About 275 people took the class last year, Vitale said.
Kara Banville was 22 "and tired of paying rent" last spring when her mother, Carol Harding, saw an item in the newspaper about the HOPE Expo. "This is what you need," she told her daughter, Banville recalled.
Banville had a good income, working in sales and customer service for Air Canada (she's Canadian), and quickly learned she was eligible for first-time-buyer assistance. "They walked me through everything," she said. She learned about the importance of home inspections. When an inspector looked over the mid Pinellas two-bedroom, two-bath villa she moved into in January for $69,400, he pointed out that the water heater was aging and that there was a slight problem with the air conditioning - "quirks you wouldn't catch yourself by a regular walk-through." She has already urged a friend to attend this year's expo.
Stela Yordanova, 42, and her husband, Anton Yordanov, 44, moved to St. Petersburg five years ago from Bulgaria. ("Green-card lottery winners," she said, explaining that her grandfather always dreamed of living in America and now she and her family are fulfilling that dream. They moved to St. Petersburg because they had Bulgarian friends here.)
After four years of apartment living, they were ready to buy. When she heard about the home-buying class at last year's expo, "I thought it was going to be six boring hours, but just like that - snap!" she said. "It was great. It was like a theater. The teachers were almost like actors, they were so easy to understand, and they took us through it step by step. They were so creative, I felt lucky I found this place. They were such a help, because there was so much we didn't know."
Yordanova was a newspaper reporter and editor in Bulgaria who now works in circulation customer care for the St. Petersburg Times. Her husband is a physician. They learned about inspections, closings, title insurance, mortgages, the role of real estate agents. "They took us from ABC to the end of the alphabet, everything we needed to know."
Immigrant families such as this one and minorities are expected to create more than two-thirds of all new households in the next 10 years, the National Association of Realtors estimates. Those groups place a higher priority on home ownership than the overall population, a study by Fannie Mae showed. Immigrant buyers have played a major role in driving the demand for housing in the last few years.
Now the family lives in a three-bedroom, two-bath villa in Palm Harbor for which they paid $99,000. "It's a great thing. It finally feels like home," Yordanova said. Every summer she sends their children - a son, 18, and a daughter, 13 - back to Bulgaria to visit family and friends. "They always speak of that as "going home,' " she said. "But this year, they're saying, "When we go home on vacation . . .' and then "When we get back home . . .' I think here is more home for them."
Visiting the expo
WHAT: Home Ownership for People Everywhere Expo, free daylong home-buying workshop and information fair.
WHEN: 8:15 a.m.-3 p.m. June 21. Exhibit hall is open 8:15 a.m.-1:30 p.m.; home buyer workshop, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.
WHERE: Largo Cultural Center, 105 Central Park Drive, next to the library.
PRESENTED BY: Community Service Foundation of Clearwater; supported by federal, state, local and community-based housing agencies, real estate agents, lenders, nonprofit assistance programs and other housing-related businesses.
INFORMATION: 727 461-0618 weekdays; after 5 p.m. and weekends, (727) 415-3664. E-mail: mail@csfhome.org Registration deadline: Wednesday.
