Continued from page C24
and Spanish speakers making up nearly 35% of California’s population, we recognize the market potential for this home buyer population,” C.A.R. President LeFrancis Arnold said in announcing the new website.
The Hispanic population now represents 16% of the nation’s entire populous, according to Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Pew Hispanic Center. And that population is also very young.
The median age in the U.S. for Hispanics is 27, compared with 42 for white non-Hispanics, meaning much more growth for Hispanic population can be expected over the course of the next few decades.
By 2050 there will be 130 million Hispanics in the U.S., accounting for 30% of the total population — double the group’s share of the population today, according to Pew.
That growth becomes more staggering when one considers what the group represents in raw purchasing power now. Pew estimates the purchasing power of the Latino community is about $1 trillion nationwide.
The first wave of Spanish-speakers Prata sees returning are those who didn’t buy a home during the real estate market crash.
“The ones that didn’t buy have been saving their money,” she said, referring to the majority of the interested buyers she’s starting to see. And many of those buyers are family members who are pooling their resources and taking advantage of the deals out there on the market.
She recently represented a father and son who went together on a house after saving and working to beef up their credit score for the past three years. They purchased a four bedroom, two-bath foreclosed home in Santa Anna for $385,000 — at the height of the market it had sold for $600,000.
Another buyer she represented were two brother-in-laws, both chefs at Orange County restaurants, who went together to purchase a four-bedroom, two-bath with a swimming pool in Laguna Hills for $449,000. At 1,651 square feet on a 8,174-square-foot lot, it was a great deal, she said.
“A lot of the
Hispanic population pools their resources to get a house Most of them
have the family backing them. They’ve pooled their money.”
Sylvia Prata Realtor
“A lot of the Hispanic population pools their resources to get a house,” she said. “Most of them have the family backing them. They’ve pooled their money.”
Coming back as well are some of the Spanish-speaking buyers who bought then lost a home, often burned because of their lack of command of the English language by unscrupulous mortgage brokers pushing risky loan products, such as negative-amortization loans and adjustable rates that ballooned when the market went south.
“It was a problem because people were signing whatever was put in front of them,” she said, adding that some lenders’ “theory was if they’re breathing, give them a loan.”
“We now educate them to make sure they don’t sign anything that they don’t know about,” added Prata, who heads the recovery committee for Orange County Home Ownership Preservation Collaborative, which works with organizations like Housing and Urban Development and various lenders to do loan modifications, educate buyers and help keep families in their homes, or get them into homes.
Aside from affordable housing prices, there’s a common motive for Spanish-speakers, English-speakers, and speakers of all languages, to want to buy a home, Prata said, adding, “They want the American dream.”
Got an interesting real estate story to tell? Email djergler@gmail.com.
