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Maggie Walker Community Land Trust setting up shop on 25th Street

04/19/2017 6:56 AM by

The Maggie Walker Community Land Trust (MWCLT) is coming to 25th Street — they will be sharing the upstairs space at the green Markel building at 1111 North 25th Street with the staff of Urban Hope.

Unfamiliar with the MWCLT? They are a nonprofit organization formed in 2016 whose goal is to maintain permanently affordable homeownership opportunities for low and moderate-income households. They offer an alternative route to home ownership that both helps ensure the economic diversity of our community and fosters homeownership.

Using a community land trust (CLT) model, MWCLT owns and stewards land to ensure long-term affordable homeownership. A homebuyer purchases the house, but leases the land from the CLT for a nominal fee.

Because the cost of the land is removed from the purchase price, the house is more affordable, resulting in a smaller down payment and lower monthly payments. By removing the cost of the land from the purchase price, the community land trust model lowers the barrier to homeownership and keeps homes affordable for future generations.

When the homeowner sells, the family earns a portion of the increased property value, with the remainder staying in the home, preserving the affordability for future low- to moderate-income families.

The CLT model neatly solves a problem of the model of affordable housing where the initial cost is subsidized, but where the cost of the house jumps to market price when the first buyer resells the property.


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