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Grow It Goal 2
Families find, finance at competitive rates, and purchase quality homes in their communities.
Common Sense
  • Buying a home is typically a family’s most important asset – it offers shelter, equity, and a solid financial base.
  • Rural families are more likely to pay too much for a mortgage.
  • Rural families are more likely to purchase manufactured housing – which can be a good housing choice, but is often financed at higher interest rates than other types of housing, and often with a conventional loan rather than a mortgage (with its tax benefits).
  • Rural areas have more substandard housing; purchasing a substandard home may drain a family of assets, not help a family build them.
Fast Facts
  • Rural borrowers are 20% more likely to have significant prepayment penalties on sub-prime mortgages. REF
  • Manufactured homes make up 18% of rural housing units – more than twice the national rate. REF
  • Around 35% of U.S. owners of HUD-code manufactured homes rent the land under their homes and do not benefit from the typical asset-building of home and land ownership. REF
  • 1.6 million rural families live in housing lacking basics such as hot and cold running water or heating. REF
  • More than one quarter of rural households is “cost-burdened,” spending more than 30% of their monthly income on housing costs. REF

Check out related Action Ideas and Alerts below! Or view other Grow It goals here.

Rural Affordable Homes through Land Trusts

December 9, 2013 by

With its beaches, forests, farms, and bucolic villages, Orcas Island – a rural island of 5,000 residents off the coast of northwest Washington State – has long drawn honeymooning, whale-watching, kayaking tourists and, increasingly, tech-exec millionaires building luxury homes. But as the “hidden Paradise” reputation of Orcas grew with vacationers and second home-owners, soaring land […]

Filed Under: Action Alert, Feature, Goal 2: Families find, finance at competitive rates, and purchase quality homes in their communities.

Rural IDAs

February 26, 2010 by

Earning It isn’t enough to lift families out of poverty—they have to Keep It and Grow It too. Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are one of the most successful and tested ways to help families Keep It and Grow It. But there are special challenges and opportunities when you start and run an IDA program in a rural place. The basics […]

Filed Under: Goal 1: Families set short-term and long-term financial goals, and attain them., Goal 1: Family members establish a financial cushion by regularly building their savings over time., Goal 2: Families find, finance at competitive rates, and purchase quality homes in their communities., Goal 2: Families use reasonably priced services, accounts and products for their savings, checking and other financial transactions., Goal 3: Families build retirement-restricted financial assets., Goal 3: Families get loans they need without using predatory lenders., Goal 4: Families maintain and retain the value of any owned or inherited land and property., Goal 4: Families reduce their debt burdens and improve their credit ratings over time., Goal 5: Children of working families get high quality pre-K-to-12 schooling, and attain higher education levels that improve their family’s economic status., Grow It, Keep It, ReFresher Webinar
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