Shared equity homeownership programs, both established and new, benefit from periodically reflecting on their programs to ensure they are following best practices.
This Resource at a Glance
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11 File
Key take-aways:
- By taking the Comprehensive Assessment, practitioners can gain a better understanding of their program’s current successes and challenges, as well as identify areas for future growth.
This assessment gives practitioners a structured way to reflect on several key areas of their program:
- Program and business planning
- Affordable pricing
- Mortgage financing
- Program marketing and homebuyer selection
- Resales
- Support, monitoring, and enforcement
The assessment is a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended questions. In general, the more “yes” answers on an assessment, the more best practices the program is following. However, no program is going to answer “yes” across the board to all the questions. There may be practices that the assessment asks about that don’t apply to every program.
After taking the assessment, practitioners should have a better idea of what is working well programmatically, where there are pain points, and where there are growth edges that the program may want to work on. Here are some resources that may be helpful after taking the assessment:
- The Stewardship Standards for Homeownership Programs
- Affordable Pricing and Resale Formula video series and tools
- Accessing Mortgage Financing Options for Shared Equity Homebuyers
- Duty to Serve Shared Equity Homeownership Certification for Fannie Mae
- Model Deed Restriction and commentary
- Model Ground Lease and commentary
Practitioners can also complete the assessment to inform a potential scope of work with an external technical assistance provider. There are some notes throughout the document with special instructions or recommendations for those who are completing the assessment for this purpose.
