Jumpin’ Jack Cash

It’s always interesting when you learn an odd little fact you didn’t know before – it ‘s like the universe is sharing a little secret with you. Generally speaking, it’s a “fact” that has absolutely no bearing on the direction of your life or your ability to get a better job, but it’s still fun to know. Let me give you an example:

Back before he started hanging out with super models and being the unofficial poster child for Botox, Mick Jagger had been accepted into the London School of Economics. In fact, even after reuniting with Keith Richards (they had been friends in grade school) with the idea of starting a band, he attended classes as an undergraduate at LSE with the plans of becoming either a journalist or a politician. I guess the groupies for journalists and politicians aren’t quite as thick on the ground as they are for a rock n roll icon.

Now, it’s not likely you’re going to walk into the office one morning and find everyone gathered around the boss’ office worked up into a slight frenzy, and when you ask Phil in accounting what’s going on, he’ll say, “The boss says he’ll give a big fat raise and a promotion to the first person to name the college Mick Jagger attended before he started the Rolling Stones with Keith Richards.” But the next time you’re watching concert footage of Mick strutting across the stage and singing “Start Me Up” and “Satisfaction”, you might muse to yourself: “Wow! I wonder what Brexit would have been like under the guidance of The Right Honourable Mick Jagger.” Boggles the mind, right?

Here’s a little bit of trivia that will not only boggle your minds but could actually have direct bearing on the direction of your life, whether you’re an agent or a prospective homebuyer: in parts of Arizona alone, over 85% of the homes qualify for down payment help. In Florida, Texas, California, and Illinois – just to name a few others – those percentages range between the 80s and 90s. Did YOU know that?

All too often, when agents are asked by their clients about the availability of down payment help, they’ll respond by saying they think the clients don’t qualify because they make too much money or the house in which they’re interested isn’t located in the right part of town. Sadly, all too often, these statements are made incorrectly and without even checking – and the clients take their word for it. There are many reasons this occurs, but the most common reason is simply due to the fact the agents don’t have the time to keep up with the changes in these programs.

“Down payment assistance tends to suffer from lack of awareness,” Mark Hughes of First Team Real Estate, in Irvine, California, told RealtyTrac in 2015. “Guidelines and specifics tend to change with economic swings. Agents typically don’t keep up with the changing requirements,” he said.

The same thing happens with prospective buyers BEFORE they even approach an agent: they’ve had certain things incorrectly drilled into their heads about down payments that they preemptively exclude themselves from considering the housing market. To use the slogan from the Arizona state lottery: “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

There’s a lot of money to be saved and houses to be purchased by first-time homebuyers with the help of these down payment assistance programs. Give us a call to learn about what’s available to you. We’ll tell our multitude of groupies to have a cucumber-infused mineral water so we can concentrate on YOUR needs.