Brooklyn home auctions have not included one unit from among the estimated 3,000 houses financed by nonprofits which created partnerships with the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development to develop affordable homes for working families.
While listings of foreclosed homes in Brooklyn are filled with properties from certain neighborhoods along the streets of East New York and Brownsville, neighborhoods developed by nonprofits like Nehemiah and Neighborhood Housing Services and financed by other nonprofits like Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Partnership for New York City are standing proud with their well-tended gardens and well-maintained driveways.
Throughout the city of New York, over 60,000 homes were built or rehabilitated for working families by these partnerships between the city and nonprofits. Of these homes, just less than one percent was lost to foreclosure.
In the East New York and Brownsville area, not one of the partnership-financed houses ever received a notice of pre foreclosures in Brooklyn.
The secret, according to city and nonprofit officials and analysts, was not really a secret. It was simply a return to the traditional practices of home lending. The partnerships built sturdy but affordable homes and sold them only to applicants with good credit histories, adequate down payments and stable jobs. Applicants were also required to attend home ownership classes and to obtain prime mortgage loans.
With these rigorous requirements, it is no wonder that none of these partnership-financed homes has defaulted and been listed for Brooklyn home auctions.
One of the appreciative homeowners is 52-year-old Zandra Brockman who noted that the loan screening was old-fashioned, but it was good because it prevented buyers from spending large amounts of money and then losing all of them later. Brockman bought her home in 1999 for $68,500.
Denise Scott, head of the New York City branch of the LISC, said that of the around 400 homes financed by the LISC in the city, not a single unit was lost to foreclosure.
Of the 20,614 homes developed and sold by these nonprofits in the city since 2003, just 13 homes have gone to auctions. Of the 3,900 homes built by Nehemiah since the 1980s, not one has been lost. According to Kathryn Wylde, head of Partnership for NYC, the foreclosure rate among partnership homes is almost nonexistent, which is a far cry from certain East New York neighborhoods where more than 1,051 defaulted last year and became at risk of entering Brooklyn home auctions.
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