Page de couverture de 114: Center for REALTOR® Development: Down Payment Assistance Options in Action with Skyler LemonsDown Payment Assistance Options in Action with Skyler Lemons

114: Center for REALTOR® Development: Down Payment Assistance Options in Action with Skyler LemonsDown Payment Assistance Options in Action with Skyler Lemons

114: Center for REALTOR® Development: Down Payment Assistance Options in Action with Skyler LemonsDown Payment Assistance Options in Action with Skyler Lemons

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 Welcome to NAR’s Center for REALTOR® Development podcast. I’m Monica Neubauer, your host. How many of you would like some more help getting buyers into homes? Um… I think everybody’s hand would be raised right now. Even my guest is saying that, and he’s going to teach us how to do that! Our guest today, Skyler Lemons, is known as Chicago’s Down Payment Grant King. He is one of NAR’s 2025 Class of 30 Under 30 award recipients. Skyler is helping people buy real estate who didn’t think they could buy real estate or didn’t know that they had the money to buy real estate. Welcome Skyler! [1:03] Skyler Lemons is an NAR 2025 30 Under 30 Award recipient. He is helping people buy real estate who didn’t think they could buy real estate or didn’t know that they had the money to buy real estate. Welcome Skyler! [1:27] Skyler thinks that every agent should know and have in their arsenal what Skyler has discovered in the world of down payment assistance. He’s on a mission to empower more agents to do this. [1:53] Skyler is known as Chicago’s Down Payment Grant King. He’s a real estate broker with Exit Strategy REALTOR®, and he’s helping first-time and low-to-moderate-income buyers access home ownership with minimal up-front costs. In 2024, Skyler helped secure over $250K in financial assistance. [2:20] Born and raised in Chicago, with a financial degree from Howard University, Skyler combines data-driven strategy, branding expertise, and a deep knowledge of the city to empower buyers and agents alike. He has 18K Instagram followers and 1,700 leads generated this year. [2:43] Skyler’s mission is simple: bridge the home ownership gap through education, strategy, and community impact. [3:17] Skyler was licensed on December 26th, 2020. He was 24 years old. He started to work his sphere of influence. All his friends of his age told him, “Skyler, you know this sounds good, but show me some apartments. I’m ready to rent an apartment.” [3:42] Skyler realized that the biggest barrier for himself and a lot of his peers wasn’t the job or the credit score; it was the down payment. Most did not have the capital to buy, and it was also the middle of a pandemic. [4:09] Interest rates were low, and banks did not have any incentive to have these types of programs because of low interest rates. Initially, Skyler did not sell a lot of real estate. He did not know how to bridge that gap. [4:23] Once interest rates started to rise, Skyler saw that banks started to come out with different programs. The main problem between the programs and Skyler’s community was the information gap. A lot of people don’t know that these things exist. [4:44] Skyler shows people where the money is. He explains to people that if they buy a $250K property, they’ll need about 6% to close, including down payment and closing costs. He suggests talking to a lender who will give $5K toward a down payment and $7 or $8K toward closing costs. [5:08] He goes out with buyers already figuring out a huge piece of the financial puzzle. [5:13] Skyler believes a lot of agents are afraid of the numbers. He reminds his clients that they need to call the lender, but he helps them paint that picture of what they are going to try to accomplish. That gets them excited. [5:32] Once they have pre-approval and secure the $5K for the down payment, and the $7 to $8K toward the closing cost, it solves a big piece of the puzzle for them. [6:17] The first opportunity fell into Skyler’s lap. An agent had connected him to a lender that had this product. At the closing table, he realized that his client was getting a check back. Skyler started talking to different lenders and learning their requirements for credit score and income. [6:59] Skyler talked to clients about which lenders might work best for them in their circumstances and why. Cook County has a $25K grant program, but after running the numbers, sometimes a lender can do better for the client without the Cook County grant. [9:07] Skyler is always painting that picture. If an agent starts painting the picture for people, the agent will get a lot more callbacks because people will feel that the agent can take them to the next step. Skyler is an educator for his clients, right off the bat. [9:44] Skyler is an introvert, so he had to learn how to sell as an introvert. [10:42] Skyler always asks his clients how they found him, and nine times out of 10, it’s on Instagram or TikTok. He uses Instagram as his digital business card, and he’s always posting. [11:09] Skyler came up with a homebuying guide. On the back of it were over 30 down-payment assistance programs in the state of Illinois. He leveraged that value to get people to download the guide. A hundred people downloaded it. [11:31] Only ten of those people were very serious at that point. That only led to making three deals. Skyler came to learn that he had to nurture clients. [11:42] If you go to Skyler’s Instagram ...
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