Mortgage Matters

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This is a KUNV Studios original program. The

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content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 90-1.5 Jazz and more, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Music 0:22
Go back, so.

Roland Daniels 0:43
Good morning, Las Vegas. Welcome to Mortgage Matters. I'm Roland Daniels, a certified mortgage advisor with Geneva Financial. My NMLS number is 355859 Our company NMLS number is 42056 and I'm here this morning, as always, with my fantastic co-host Heidi Griffith. Good morning, Heidi.

Heidi Griffith 1:06
Good morning, Roland. Happy. I'm good. Happy Sunday.

Roland Daniels 1:10
Happy Sunday.

Heidi Griffith 1:11
How are you?

Roland Daniels 1:12
I am doing a whole lot better.

Heidi Griffith 1:14
Yeah, you were under the weather for a minute, weren't you? I

Roland Daniels 1:15
was lost my voice for a few days.

Heidi Griffith 1:17
That's tough.

Roland Daniels 1:18
It

Heidi Griffith 1:19
is. You're feeling better, though.

Roland Daniels 1:20
I am definitely.

Heidi Griffith 1:21
I am happy to hear that. Good morning, everyone. I'm Heidi Griffith. I'm also a mortgage advisor and your director of client services. My MLS number is 2247754 So, if you've been listening to us for a while, then then you you bound to have heard of the Worker Advantage program through the Nevada Housing Division, we've been talking about a lot, haven't we? We

Roland Daniels 1:45
have every moment that we get a chance. It's

Heidi Griffith 1:48
it's a great down payment assistance program. It was created out of the AB 540 housing bill. That bill was created to provide accessibility and affordability to Nevadans,

Roland Daniels 2:03
right? Attainable housing, maybe

Heidi Griffith 2:05
it was attainable and affordable was the the term used. Attainable, probably more so than affordable. We have that conversation a lot. If you're tuning in, you probably understand the affordability factor isn't where we would hope it

Roland Daniels 2:22
is,

Heidi Griffith 2:23
right? Right, right. But but the Worker Advantage program-it really the the first time that we heard about it, we were thrilled. It was, and it came online December the first. Yep. So it's been around for just a little bit. I don't think we're going to make it a year for the program because there was only 900 loans available. Right. For the

Roland Daniels 2:40
first families right here in the state of Nevada.

Heidi Griffith 2:43
So the state allocated 900 families.

Roland Daniels 2:46
Yes,

Heidi Griffith 2:48
are able to use this.

Roland Daniels 2:49
So for someone who's never heard of the Worker Advantage before, why are we so excited about

Heidi Griffith 2:57
it? Man, there's just so many components to this. So the Nevada Housing Division, Nevada Rural Housing, we offer about 20 different down payment assistance programs, right? Because we understand the barriers to homeownership. We understand that the average home buyer is in their 40s now. We understand that people don't have the means to purchase because of two driving factors, right?

Roland Daniels 3:24
Down payment, money, and credit.

Heidi Griffith 3:27
Money and credit are the two biggest barriers to homeownership. I think that the Worker Advantage program, the way that it was created, the way that it was structured, really took part of that burden away, didn't

Roland Daniels 3:39
it? I absolutely think so.

Heidi Griffith 3:41
And and not only is it just a down payment assistance program, but it's got some secret sauce to it.

Roland Daniels 3:46
It does. It's probably the first time that they've introduced a a how should I say a mechanism or a way to actually buy down the rate.

Heidi Griffith 3:57
Right, man. That's that is the secret sauce. So so typically with down payment assistance programs, you get a either a percentage or $1 amount. This program actually offers home buyers $20,000 and you can use it in several different ways. The first way is pretty basic; it's straightforward. You get $20,000 You can use it towards your down payment and your closing costs, depending on what that total is, the

Roland Daniels 4:23
entire 20,000 You can

Heidi Griffith 4:24
use the entire 20,000 but where this program has really shined is with this buy down option, because you know the number one question we get on a weekly basis

Roland Daniels 4:40
is, "What is your rate?

Heidi Griffith 4:41
What is the interest rate? What are the interest rates? I'm waiting for rates interest

Roland Daniels 4:46
rates to come down.

Heidi Griffith 4:47
Man, if I had a nickel, if how about $1 If I take a penny for every time I heard it, because that is the bigger thing. Everybody's waiting for rates to come down, and although rates are. Are at a historic average.

Roland Daniels 5:02
They are

Heidi Griffith 5:02
right. People are still waiting. They're they're used to and familiar with that COVID era interest rate at two and a half and three and a half percent. We say it time and time again. Those those rates were kind of manipulated because we needed to stimulate the economy.

Roland Daniels 5:19
Agreed.

Heidi Griffith 5:20
Here we are. It's 2026. Rates are in the sixes.

Roland Daniels 5:24
Yes, actually, rates have been going up for the last month or so. No matter what you hear on social media or the news, rates have not been going down. Well,

Heidi Griffith 5:33
and you know, we we've talked about it before. There's this whole up and down thing. One day you see headlines that say rates are lower. One day you see them, and oh my goodness, rates are going through the ceiling. And when you say rates are up, they they are up, but they're not up tremendously. We're not seeing a point.

Roland Daniels 5:49
Kind of like when we when you hear it on social media, like rates have went down for the last two weeks. Well, it may have went down like point 01

Heidi Griffith 5:57
Right, and that that's not going to make any difference in your payment in your mortgage-it's not going to make a difference to you. So

Roland Daniels 6:03
we mean, so when we say that rates have went up, maybe about an eighth of a point,

Heidi Griffith 6:10
right over the past several months. Yes, but but this program actually allows us to take part of that $20,000.02

Roland Daniels 6:18
options,

Heidi Griffith 6:19
and buy down the interest rate. They've got a 2% option where we use 2% of your your loan amount.

Roland Daniels 6:25
Yep.

Heidi Griffith 6:25
Or we've got a 4% option, and then we use 4% of that of your loan amount out of that 20,000 Whatever's remaining, and that's going to be based on how much house you're buying, right? The sales price here. So for an

Roland Daniels 6:37
example, on a $400,000 home, 4% is 16,000 4000 can go towards down payment, down payment and closing

Heidi Griffith 6:45
costs, especially if you've got some money saved already. But we we've seen some really good structuring with some some realtor negotiation like we've never seen before.

Roland Daniels 6:56
Yes, I'm excited to for the later part of the show.

Heidi Griffith 6:59
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we do have some good stories. I'm excited about that as well. So you know, the Worker Advantage program-it's for essential workers. The legislature determined what those categories were. So, you know, sometimes when we think essential worker, again, we're going back to like that COVID time, right? And essential workers look a little different based on what the state took a look at and where this money should be allocated, then that time, right? But I think

Roland Daniels 7:27
there's four categories.

Heidi Griffith 7:28
There's four categories. So we've got healthcare, and that's not just you know you're a nurse, so you qualify. Pretty much, if you're in a medical building, whether it be a hospital, a doctor's office, a dentist office, more than likely you qualify,

Roland Daniels 7:42
right?

Heidi Griffith 7:42
Right. We've got education, and the state of Nevada, the housing division has a teacher program.

Roland Daniels 7:49
They do.

Heidi Griffith 7:50
They've had that for a while now. That was used as a mechanism to get teachers into houses, keep them in the state, right, to

Roland Daniels 7:58
retain them,

Heidi Griffith 7:59
right. And that's just a flat 7500 but it was only for public school teachers K through 12k, through not subs, not admin staff, none of that. So just for teachers, this program, the Worker Advantage program, actually allows for everyone.

Roland Daniels 8:18
Yep, school counselors, librarians, janitors, bus drivers, bus drivers,

Heidi Griffith 8:23
kitchen workers, admin. You know, we have so many friends that work for Clark County School District, and every single one of them is eligible for this program. And then we've got public safety, so that's not just police and fire. Right, that's EMTs. That's we have a buyer that we're going to talk about later, who actually works at Harry Reid in public safety. Right. So that one opened up a new door, and then the one that I was really excited about because a lot of times these folks get left behind in in these types of programs, right? But construction was a big one, so tradespeople

Roland Daniels 9:03
and they are key essential workers,

Heidi Griffith 9:05
100% in the state. Because I think that when the legislature sat down and discussed this, it was about what happens if we see a lot of people leave the state. What happens with our infrastructure? What happens with our medical care? All of that good stuff, and I think that's how they determined these categories.

Roland Daniels 9:23
Right,

Heidi Griffith 9:24
and the state of Nevada Housing Division actually puts out a list. They've got a list on their website of all of the essential workers. However, your job might not be on that list, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you don't qualify.

Roland Daniels 9:39
Right, because we can ask for your information, maybe verification of employee from your

Heidi Griffith 9:45
employer. Yep,

Roland Daniels 9:46
submit it to the Nevada Housing Division, and then they'll let us know if you're actually an essential worker under their program.

Heidi Griffith 9:53
Absolutely. So if you have any questions about anything we talk about today, or have an idea for a future topic. Please feel free to reach out. You can call or text us. We're at 702-540-0420 Again, our number is 702-540-0420 So I think the reason that we we decided we were going to dedicate this entire show to the Worker Advantage program was because we do have so few loans remaining.

Roland Daniels 10:25
Actually, under 90 of them under

Heidi Griffith 10:27
90 available. They started out with 900

Roland Daniels 10:30

Heidi Griffith 10:31
A lot of families have taken advantage and used this to purchase their home.

Roland Daniels 10:37
Yes, they have.

Heidi Griffith 10:38
And it's one of those things that we've talked to so many people that didn't purchase up to now, and we're on the clock now.

Roland Daniels 10:47
We are on the clock, and it gives you the opportunity to get into a home with some of those low rates because the actual the rates are still in the fives when it comes to the Worker Advantage program,

Heidi Griffith 10:58
and we've seen great success. So when we decided that we were going to do this show. I went back and I just looked at the last five worker advantage closings that we had. So folks that were able to use this program that we worked with and get into their homes because I kind of wanted to to lay out how they structured it, how we structured it, and how it ended up and the benefit to them by using this program, and I was actually really surprised. You know, we know each file, we do, and we know the story behind each file. But when we're dealing with a file, we're dealing with you specifically. We're not bringing other things into the mix. Laying all of this stuff out was really interesting,

Roland Daniels 11:39
right? An eye opener.

Heidi Griffith 11:40
It it was an eye opener. We both know how powerful it

Roland Daniels 11:44
is. It

Heidi Griffith 11:45
is, and so I just I I took them, and I think we go through them one by one. The last five, because I think that you, if you're listening, are going to be really surprised about how great this program can work. Right. You know, one of the biggest myths to homeownership is that you need 20% down. That was never true, by the way. That was never true. That was never true. But no, you don't need to have you know tons of cash to purchase a home. As a matter of fact, when when the state took a look at this and how this was going to work, they realized lots of us work really hard. We make a good living, right? It's just that saving for the down payment that always. We just need a little help

Roland Daniels 12:28
and assistance.

Heidi Griffith 12:28
And then with prices continuing to rise, there was another. There was an article yesterday. Prices went up again in June. With that in hand, now every time the price goes up. We qualify for a little bit less house, don't

Roland Daniels 12:43
we? We do, and this helps bridge that gap to homeownership.

Heidi Griffith 12:46
It does. I agree with you. So let's talk about the first one. I'm not going to use names today because I haven't spoke with all of these folks. I just pulled this stuff this morning, right? And I want to make sure that we, you know, we have their permission before we say that. But we we have this this gal. She actually worked in a medical office. She was an office supervisor. She was a back end supervisor.

Roland Daniels 13:06
Oh, currently is

Heidi Griffith 13:07
right. Yes, she still is. Yeah, she purchased a an adorable townhouse.

Roland Daniels 13:12
Yep, she did. It

Heidi Griffith 13:13
was a two bedroom townhouse. She purchased it for $330,000

Roland Daniels 13:18
And what did it appraise for? It

Heidi Griffith 13:20
appraised for 336 so she had $6,000 in instant equity the minute she turned the key on the door. She got $11,000 in seller credits. We talk about this a lot. If you haven't heard us talk about seller credits before, what that is is it's asking the seller to pay a portion of your closing costs, right? A

Roland Daniels 13:42
contribution,

Heidi Griffith 13:42
right? So instead of, or even in addition to asking for a lower sales price, because that's what we want to do usually, we want to go in and negotiate price. You can negotiate price, but you can also ask for seller credits. Each loan type has a maximum seller credit allowance. So this was an FHA loan. FHA allows for 6% of the sales price to be given as a contribution by the seller. She got $11,000 So $11,000 would be applied towards her closing cost. Her interest rate 5.25 We said four again. 5.25 was her interest rate. We used the four point buy down, so we we took 4% of the loan amount

Roland Daniels 14:27
to get to

Heidi Griffith 14:27
that rate. Then the remainder was applied towards her down payment. Her monthly payment with a $257 HOA, so that's payment, interest, taxes, insurance, and HOA was $2,500 If she she hadn't have used that program, I went back to that day and looked at where rates were approximately. Her payment without the worker advantage would have been approximately 2870 ish. So she's actually saving about 360 bucks a month. About 360 bucks a month. About what is that? $4,400 Yeah, about

Roland Daniels 15:08
4300 bucks a year.

Heidi Griffith 15:09
$4,300 a year, just because she utilized the Worker Advantage program.

Roland Daniels 15:15
And what about her bringing money to the table?

Heidi Griffith 15:18
Well, this is the one. This is it because remember she got that $11,000 from seller credits.

Roland Daniels 15:24
Yep,

Heidi Griffith 15:25
her cash to close was 445

Roland Daniels 15:28
So she used the down payment assistance programs to buy down the rate. Right, the difference goes towards the rest of the down

Heidi Griffith 15:35
payment and any closing costs. We have

Roland Daniels 15:36
the seller credits kick in, and that covers the rest of the down payment and a portion of the closing, her

Heidi Griffith 15:43
cash to close was 440-$5 And she's such a great human; she really is. We we went to the closing with her, and she was super excited because she didn't think this was going to happen again. She'd owned a home way back when,

Roland Daniels 15:56
she did,

Heidi Griffith 15:57
and she, you know, it was it was during the crash, and she was faced with a lot of stuff. She didn't think it was going to be possible, and she's so excited.

Roland Daniels 16:07
She is

Heidi Griffith 16:07
to be in her, and it is. It's an adorable townhome, beautiful community, multiple pools and parks, and all the good stuff.

Roland Daniels 16:15
Right,

Heidi Griffith 16:16
and then we've got the next one. This one, this one actually, this one touches my heart. You worked with this gal for quite some time.

Roland Daniels 16:24
We actually did.

Heidi Griffith 16:25
She works for CSN. She's in education. You remember?

Roland Daniels 16:30
I do remember. You

Heidi Griffith 16:31
remember? She she ended up purchasing a single family home. It was a two story. It was about I think 1900 square feet, give or take. She paid 400,000 for the property, here we go again. What the property appraised at?

Roland Daniels 16:44
$415,000 Here

Heidi Griffith 16:47
we go. $15,000 in instant equity. The minute she turned the key in the door, she got $10,000 Her agent was able to negotiate $10,000 in seller credits. Her interest rate

Roland Daniels 17:00
5.125 point 1255

Heidi Griffith 17:02
and an eighth. That's unbelievable.

Roland Daniels 17:04
Yes,

Heidi Griffith 17:05
she got five and an eighth. Again, we used the 4% buydown. So we did. We used 4% of the sales price to buy it down to that interest rate. Her monthly payment with her HOA 2672 a month. Again, I looked back at the time, and to see what rates were historically on that day,

Roland Daniels 17:24
right?

Heidi Griffith 17:24
And with that, her payment would have been about 30-$100 without this buydown,

Roland Daniels 17:30
right?

Heidi Griffith 17:31
That's going to save her about 430 bucks a month,

Roland Daniels 17:35
and that probably equals just over 50-$100 for the year.

Heidi Griffith 17:40
50-$100 for a year she saved just by using the Worker Advantage program, and she came to closing with 7900 bucks. So I talk to people all the time about the cost of rent. Right, we do the rent keeps going up

Roland Daniels 17:54
every day.

Heidi Griffith 17:54
There is no rent cap here, and I think a bigger hurdle with renting is the cost to go rent something. Those deposits, you know, you've got first month, you've got last month, you've got security. You you have all of these fees combined:

Roland Daniels 18:07
application fees, key fees,

Heidi Griffith 18:09
and so it could be a small chunk of change to get into a rental property.

Roland Daniels 18:16
Right.

Heidi Griffith 18:17
She closed on her property with $7,900 out of her pocket.

Roland Daniels 18:21
She did.

Heidi Griffith 18:22
That was it. She bought an almost 2000 square foot home, single family home, with less than $10,000

Roland Daniels 18:30
and she has $15,000 in instant equity. She's got

Heidi Griffith 18:34
$15,000 in instant equity, and she's got five and an eighth as her interest rate. And then we've got this. This. This one is near and dear to my heart. So, we've talked about her before. She is a gal who's got two small kids.

Roland Daniels 18:49
She does.

Heidi Griffith 18:50
She was currently renting, and she wasn't comfortable with her current rent payment.

Roland Daniels 18:55
Right.

Heidi Griffith 18:55
She was almost at 2200 bucks a month, and she knew that that was putting a strain on her finances, and she wasn't able to enjoy life with her kids. You know, her kids have activities; they like to travel, they like to do stuff, and she was strapped based on that 20-200 bucks a month. She told me when we first started talking that she absolutely couldn't purchase anything that was at that price point, so we had to work backwards on numbers. She qualified for a lot more property, but she was diligent about making sure she found a property where the numbers were

Roland Daniels 19:30
right. She understood her budget. She understood what that monthly payment would look like, and she actually stuck to her guns. Sure. We we were proud of her.

Heidi Griffith 19:39
She did. She stuck to her guns, and she understood the value of homeownership. So it took her a little bit of time. She looked at a lot of properties. Her, her realtor, and myself, we went back and forth many nights, many late nights, trying to figure out: Does this property work? Nope. Okay. What's the HOA? What are the property taxes? We broke. Down every single number to figure out what worked best for her, and when it didn't work, she didn't get her hopes up. She just moved on to the next property. And when we're talking about properties at the price point she was looking at, number one, she needed a three bedroom because she had two kids. Right. She preferred to have an area where she could work because she works from home sometimes, and she was able to just by being diligent, just by not giving up hope or faith, she was able to find a property.

Roland Daniels 20:28
She did.

Heidi Griffith 20:29
She found a property. The purchase price that they offered and that was accepted was 240-$5,000

Roland Daniels 20:36
And what did it appraise for?

Heidi Griffith 20:38
So this is kind of a theme, right? This is a reoccurring theme that we have today. What did it appraise for? Number one, she found a super nice three-bedroom condo.

Roland Daniels 20:48
Yeah, it wasn't a single family, but it was a condo that met her needs. A

Heidi Griffith 20:51
three-bedroom condo that had a play area for the kids, so a park, right?

Roland Daniels 20:56
Yep,

Heidi Griffith 20:56
had had a great pool, was in a really nice location because that was important to her too. So now, when you're limited on price, you're limited on you know location. You're limited on availability. You're limited on all of those things. She found it. She bought a three bedroom condo for 245,000 The appraisal came back. Are you ready? Came back at $282,000

Roland Daniels 21:20
And then in this scenario, 30-$7,000 in instant.

Heidi Griffith 21:26
Man, talk about waiting it out to do the right thing. She had 30-$7,000 the second she turned the key in the door.

Roland Daniels 21:34
Yes,

Heidi Griffith 21:35
she was able to get. She actually got her maximum seller credits. Like I said earlier, each loan type, so FHA, conventional, VA, USDA, they all have their own stipulations on how much a seller can give based on what you put down. Right. She went with a conventional loan. The max seller concession on a conventional loan under 10% is 3% Yes. So that was the maximum the seller could give her. She got it. She got 7350 in seller credits. Her interest rate was five and a half percent. Her monthly payment. Now remember, nice community, and this is why we fine tuned every number. She paid 245 The HOA in the community that she lives in is $302 a month.

Roland Daniels 22:23
So the HOA is a little bit higher, but with the interest rate, the purchase price, it all

Heidi Griffith 22:28
worked out.

Roland Daniels 22:29
It all worked.

Heidi Griffith 22:29
It all worked out. And the reason the HOA was higher was because of the amenities that were being included in the neighborhood that worked really well for her needs. So now her payment with that HOA payment because when we qualify you, we qualify using whatever that HOA payment is. Your mortgage doesn't pay the HOA though; you pay it outside of your mortgage. So her monthly payment, including that $302 HOA, $1,912

Roland Daniels 22:57
So it was still under her budget. It was

Heidi Griffith 23:00
less than her rent was. It was less than she was paying for a similar property for rent.

Roland Daniels 23:05
Yes, and

Heidi Griffith 23:05
she did it. She did it. So her estimated payment, when I looked back at what was the rate on this day, her estimated payment without using this program with the buydown was about 2167 It wouldn't have worked for her.

Roland Daniels 23:18
Right.

Heidi Griffith 23:19
It was. This was what had to happen for it to work for her, and you know she's saving about 250-$5 a month, which

Roland Daniels 23:28
is about just over $3,000 a year.

Heidi Griffith 23:30
$3,000 a year. That's yeah.

Roland Daniels 23:32
And what does she bring?

Heidi Griffith 23:34
Her cash to close. So her she actually got a gift for her earnest money deposit. Her earnest money deposit was $3,000 Her mom actually paid for her earnest money. Okay, she came to closing with 1920-

Roland Daniels 23:50
So, with mom helping her out, she was able to buy a three-bedroom condo out of her own pocket for 1920-519

Heidi Griffith 24:00
20-five, less than she was paying for rent. Yes, less than she was paying for rent. So her story it touches me. Her kids were static. I remember we went to closing. They closed the day that we did the signing, right? Yep. And she hadn't told her kids that she was purchasing it.

Roland Daniels 24:18
Right.

Heidi Griffith 24:18
She didn't want to let her kids down because she knew it was a needle in a haystack. My cheeks are getting red right now because she didn't want to tell her kids. She didn't want to get their hopes up, and her kids kept asking her because her kids knew that they the lease was up. They knew that the lease was up, and they kept saying, "Mon, do we have a place to live? And she's like, "We'll figure it out. Don't worry about it. But she didn't want to tell them until she got the phone call that that had funded and recorded, and and she was going to pick up the keys, so she brought the kids with her when she got the keys, and she sent us photos of the kids' faces, and she'd made little signs for them, welcome home, and you know she had talked to them in the past about you know the possibility of trying to buy a house, and that they would be able to paint. Our own rooms, and it was just-it was a really touching story. It was a really touching story. So all of these stories bring me joy. And like I said, when I sat down and wrote them all out, man, all the reason

Roland Daniels 25:11
why we do this. Looking back at these last three files, what do you think that stood out the most?

Heidi Griffith 25:18
Honestly, way way more than I expected. You know, when I laid everything out side by side, I expected, you know, just different stories. We knew all of the stories. We know all of the people. We know their background stories. They all have amazing background stories. But instead, I found some really incredible similarities. All three were first-time homebuyers, based on what a first-time homebuyer is, what we in the mortgage world consider a first-time homebuyer is. If you haven't owned a home in the past three years or more, two of the the three had never owned prior to. All three were women. All three purchased amazing homes for less than $400,000 Every single home appraised for more than the purchase price, every buyer and their agent was able to negotiate seller credits, and together, you know, they all used the Worker Advantage program.

Roland Daniels 26:10
They did, and I think that's what really makes that the the Worker Advantage so remarkable. These are three Rio Nevada homeowners, three people who were able to overcome barriers to home ownership because this program existed.

Heidi Griffith 26:28
They did it, and they did it. And you know, a couple of them didn't believe that they could, and they're in their homes.

Roland Daniels 26:33
They are,

Heidi Griffith 26:34
and it's because of the Worker Advantage program. Remember, we started out with 900 loans

Roland Daniels 26:40
as of December the first,

Heidi Griffith 26:42
we're quickly approaching no more loans. We're at right under 90. We're at just under 90 loans remaining. The program's going to be gone quicker than we'd like. You're more than welcome to reach out to see if you qualify or to find out how to get started. Please feel free. We're at 702540042 025400420 Again, our number is 702-540-0420

Roland Daniels 27:09
We'll be back next Sunday morning at 730 a.m. right here on KUNV 91.5 Until then, believe in what's possible, even if you've been told that it's out of reach, and remember, stay true to yourself and your mind.

Heidi Griffith 27:25
Bye.

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