The June celebration reinforces the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to supporting affordable homeownership and lowering housing costs for American families.
Today, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) joined President Joe Biden to celebrate June as the 22nd Annual National Homeownership Month. During National Homeownership Month, HUD is proud to double down on its ongoing leadership and commitment to helping Americans achieve the dream of homeownership and to supporting the stability and economic well-being of individuals and families across the nation.
HUD Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman shared a statement on Homeownership Month:
Homeownership is the way many people in the U.S. build wealth, but the dream of owning a home of one’s own feels out of reach for many Americans, especially people of color, young people, and people with low incomes who face historical and financial barriers to homeownership. Our goal is to help people purchase homes they can afford, including starter homes.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken decisive action to expand access to homeownership by supporting housing counseling and down payment assistance, reducing barriers for those with student loan debt, allowing positive rental history to impact someone’s chances of obtaining an FHA-insured mortgage, and lowering mortgage insurance premiums on FHA mortgages.
Taken together, these strategic policy changes have helped millions of people become homeowners, including 2.5 million first-time homebuyers. But we know there is more to do. That’s why, this National Homeownership Month, HUD is doubling down on its work to advance homeownership opportunities for all who want them.
Since Day One, the Biden-Harris Administration has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to expanding equitable access to the stability and wealth building potential of homeownership, and HUD has taken multiple actions to enable more households to achieve and maintain homeownership. Throughout National Homeownership Month, HUD will host a series of events and engagements to amplify these efforts and increase awareness of the many tools and opportunities available to assist first-time homebuyers, low-and moderate-income individuals and families, and borrowers of color in acquiring a home.
“Homeownership promotes stability and healthy outcomes, builds intergenerational wealth, and ultimately is fundamental to America’s promise of opportunity,” said Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner Julia Gordon. “During National Homeownership Month, we plan to showcase our work to break down barriers to homeownership, close the racial wealth gap, and ensure that every family has the opportunity to build a better future.”
HUD’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is the largest mortgage insurer in the world, serving a higher percentage of first-time home buyers, low- and moderate-income households, and people of color than any other mortgage channel. Over seven million American households live in a home financed by an FHA-insured mortgage. Through FHA, 732,319 households – including 223,882 borrowers of color – realized the dream of homeownership in fiscal year 2023 alone.
Over the past year, HUD has taken these steps:
- Completed one year since reducing its annual mortgage insurance premium by 35 percent, saving over 682,000 borrowers an average of about $876 per year. Together, these borrowers are saving nearly $600 million in the first year of their mortgages.
- Expanded language access resources to provide multilingual educational resources to the nation’s growing diverse population and remove barriers to homeownership for those who have limited English proficiency. More than 40 FHA homeownership documents and other educational resources are now available in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese on the Language Access Resources page.
- Updated its policies to provide greater qualifying flexibility for borrowers purchasing homes with accessory dwelling units (ADUs), which add to the supply of affordable rental housing. This new policy will enable more homebuyers to leverage the power of ADUs to enhance the wealth building potential of homeownership.
- Required lenders to strengthen their Reconsideration of Value processes, which enable borrowers to request a re-assessment of the appraised value of their property if they believe that the appraisal was inaccurate or biased. This effort supports the work outlined in the Biden-Harris Administration’s Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity Interagency Task Force.
- Made $85 million available in competitive grants for communities to identify and remove barriers to affordable housing production and preservation.
- Streamlined the nation’s largest affordable housing grant program – the HOME Investment Partnership Program – to reduce administrative burden for communities and housing developers, improve assistance and protections for renters, strengthen the use of HOME for homeownership activities, and encourage green and climate resilient building practices.
- Created a new loss mitigation tool – FHA’s Payment Supplement Partial Claim – to help borrowers avoid foreclosure and retain their homes when other FHA home retention options are unable to generate a sustainable monthly mortgage payment.
- Invested $84 million to transform residents’ lives, equipping them with the tools to achieve financial stability, attain families’ goals, and build generational wealth and economic mobility.
- Continued its work to update the Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards, commonly called the HUD Code. When completed later this summer, changes to the Code will provide greater flexibility for the manufacture of safe, affordable, and efficient manufactured housing.
- Launched a $10 million Homeownership Initiative funding opportunity to directly support housing counseling services for prospective homebuyers in underserved communities.
- Provided $40 million in funding to expand housing counseling to help bridge the racial homeownership gap in underserved communities, awarded to 165 housing counseling agencies.
For more information on HUD’s homeownership programs and resources, visit www.hud.gov/program_offices/housing/nhm_2024.