​​Home Ownership Program

​Every day, families partner with Habitat for Humanity to build homes and, as a result, better lives. Over the course of their journey, each family invests hard work and dedication on an intensive path to homeownership. From attending homeowner courses to completing sweat equity hours, each step empowers future homeowners and helps create the access and foster the skills they need to succeed. 
Come along!
Step 1: Inquire
​Join us for an information sessions where potential homeowners can learn about their homeownership program. This gives potential future homeowners time to ask questions and make connections.

Step 2: Apply
If Habitat’s homeownership program is the right fit for a family, they can apply locally during an open enrollment period. Local Habitat staff consider a family’s eligibility. They review each application carefully while focusing on the following main criteria:
  • Need for housing: Prospective Habitat homeowners must demonstrate a need for safe, affordable housing.
  • Willingness to partner: Once selected, Habitat homeowners must partner with Habitat through the process, including performing sweat equity.
  • Ability to pay: Homeowners must also be able and willing to pay an affordable mortgage. Habitat mortgage payments are cycled back into the community to help build additional Habitat houses.

Step 3: Interview
​The next step is an in-person interview. Habitat staff and/or volunteers make a home visit to hear more about a potential future homeowner’s desire to partner with Habitat, to get to know the family, and to learn about their current housing status and future housing needs.

Step 4: Approve
After careful review of each family’s full application packet, Habitat staff and/or volunteers present their recommendations to the local board of directors. At most Habitat affiliates, the board makes the final determination.
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Step 5: Participate
Each family who partners with Habitat completes a certain number of hours of sweat equity — typically between 200 and 400 — before move-in day. Often, any adult member of the immediate or extended family can contribute to this total; sometimes volunteers, co-workers and friends also help out.

Step 6: Close
Next, homeowners complete the paperwork for a mortgage. Habitat offers homebuyers an affordable mortgage with monthly payments taking into account household income. Mortgage payments made by Habitat homeowners help build more affordable homes.

Step 7: Move in
Once all of the forms are signed and all of the construction is complete, it’s time to celebrate! Friends and family, as well as the Habitat staff and volunteers who worked alongside the family on this journey, come together to dedicate the home. It’s the first of many joyous occasions to be celebrated in the new home.