Getting your player ready...
Does it really make any difference if you own your house or rent it? “For me it was life-changing,” says Jesse Suprenant, who with Megan Ogan has bought a first place near Peterson AFB, with a little help from CHFA – the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority. “It’s such a positive feeling to know it’s yours,” he adds. “Everywhere I look I feel potential — to shape it into whatever you want to.”
Suprenant is one of dozens of homeowners who took time to write CHFA this year, explaining what it meant for them to buy. The writers – you can read their stories at CHFAinfo.com/MyHomeContest – are among 80,000 buyers who have been helped in making that leap by CHFA during 40 years since the Colorado Legislature gave it that mission. Many of those had up-close-and-personal experiences with how renting compares to buying. “It was stressful,” recalls Heidi Guzman of living in a 900-square-foot 2-bedroom apartment, when she and husband Zachary realized they had a second baby on the way. Both were working – had plenty of additional expenses, and were looking for a 3-bedroom rental, but finding nothing that fit their budget. Zachary, says Heidi, showed her a photo of a single-family home around double the size of their apartment, with large front and backyards. “This is great, but we can’t afford the rent,” Heidi told him. Zachary persevered in getting her to take a look — NOT a rental, it turned out, but a home for sale. The pair talked with a lender, who found they qualified for a CHFA-sponsored loan with a low down payment and a monthly mortgage was $50 less than their apartment rent. “When I’ve rented I always think I’m taking care of someone else’s problem,” Heidi Guzman recalls now. “In owning there’s a pride – the yard is ours. We can make improvements and know that we don’t have to depend on somebody else to provide that for us.” Kathy King, now an owner in a Commerce City neighborhood near Stapleton where she’s already been invited to lunch by neighbors, waited until age 60 before giving owning a try. “I saw it and fell in love immediately, made an offer and it was accepted,” she recalls now. What difference has it made in her life? “I was shocked by how much I feel I have roots, not just in the house but the community,” she told me. “I want to volunteer; I want that community to thrive.” For Jesse Suprenant, buying that first house was something he’d thought about since his teen years, when his dad, a carpenter, bought the family’s first home; then had Jesse help in fixing it up. “I can take those lessons and apply them,” he says now, showing basement space where he and Megan have made a media room, accessed by an attractive staircase lined in bookshelves. He’s followed his father’s path into construction, but he’s learning keyboard on the side and would like to add a studio down there; while Megan, a photographer who develops her images in film, not digitally, is thinking about getting a darkroom. Meanwhile, they’ve gone from 600 square feet renting to 2,000 feet owning – and are hosting dinners for friends, something they never did renting. “We have no intension of ever selling it,” Suprenant says. “After we’ve shaped it, how could we walk away from it?”CHFAinfo.com/ParticipatingLenders
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