With the help of sponsors, donors, volunteers, and community partners, we build homes in family-friendly communities and sell them to qualifying homeowners. Habitat homeownership requires the homeowner to volunteer 500 hours, but there is no down-payment for the home. Each homeowner has affordable monthly payments that bring stability to their housing situation.
Why Habitat Home Ownership?
There are several benefits to Habitat home ownership:
- No cash down payment is required.
- Homeowners payments will not fluctuate over the course of each term with our new mortgage model.
- Homeowners gain access to shared market appreciation on their home upon graduating from Habitat Home Ownership.
Am I eligible?
Do you want to own your own home? Habitat home ownership may be for you. We sell homes to families who qualify with our mortgage partner, and who meet the following criteria:
- Be Canadian Citizens or Permanent Residents of Canada.
- Be employed on a full-time, permanent basis.
- Have an annual gross household income of $35,000 – $64,000 (as determined by Habitat).
- Maintain a good credit rating (no bankruptcy, credit card payments are up-to-date, etc.).
- Agree to volunteer 500 hours with Habitat.
- You acknowledge that you will be paying interest (to Habitat’s financial partner) on the mortgage.
Habitat’s Buy Back Program provides Habitat with the option to repurchase a home from a family in order to serve another family with that same house.
When a home is repurchased, the homeowner receives the equity accrued over their time in the Habitat program. The homeowner will use their equity to purchase a home on the open market or put it towards other meaningful life goals. Habitat then performs any needed repairs to the property and makes it available for another family in need of a “hand-up”. One home can serve several families over the course of its life, and the cost to serve a family through the Buy Back program is a fraction of what it costs to serve a family through new construction.