Community Engagement

Homeownership provides so much security and stability and it’s something that is attainable. It’s something that you can plan towards and work towards. Once you get to the point of being able to be a homeowner, it really opens up a world of security for yourself and generations to come.

If you’ve already started thinking of that big purchase of buying your home, or you’re dreaming about it already, just get informed; it won’t cost you anything to ask.

Wanted to hit our workshops because it covers a lot of topics: from insurance to credit, how to budget, the lending process, how to purchase title insurance to make a lot of better decisions

With all of the different types of resources that are out there now, through different levels of mortgages and different opportunities that banks and other financial institutions offer, they really do make the American dream more affordable for people.

Offering a greater array of product, it loses the misconception that “I’m not eligible for financing”, “I heard I can’t obtain financing.” We show them that there are other means and ways to obtain financing.

Just keep in mind that your property taxes will reset to the market value once there’s a new homeowner. The first year, you’re going to inherit the previous owner’s tax bill. If they had exemptions, whatever they were being taxed during the second year, ill reset to the market value.

Know where you stand with your credit. Know where you stand in your finances. If you don’t understand how to understand what your picture looks like, seek the free help of a home buying counselor who can sit down and draw that picture up for you.

Consolidated Credit is providing educational opportunities and events like these where people can come out and get additional information and know what’s available to them. The customer can come and meet the professionals that can help them.

There’s no question that the credit piece of the financing transaction is critical and crucial to what somebody’s going to obtain, and if you guys are in a position to help coach and counsel them on what it takes to have the greatest possible credit outcome, surely they’re going to be given the greatest opportunity in lending products as well.

These first-time homebuyer events, I highly recommend, then at least you will go from A to Z where you learn about everything so you’re not shocked at the end of the day.

Financial literacy is important because it provides the educator and their family options and opportunities. I think it’s important for community collaborations because we are all serving the same families, and so if we’re able to capitalize on our resources and bring our resources together we’re able to serve more and impact more lives to create more financial stability and wealth for families.

Financial literacy is extremely important, especially for what I do at Nova Southeastern University, as we are a public and private library. We work with the community. We like to educate them on all sorts of literacy issues and financial literacy is one of the things they come to our library to receive educational resources on.

Financial literacy is especially important with our youth because we make an investment in those minds. We want to make sure that our country, our world, and everybody in our future is financially capable.

I think financial literacy is important because so many people right now are dealing with the situation in the economy, and it’s important for them to learn the basics: budgeting, saving, and day-to-day money issues.

For many years I was a mortgage loan originator and it was in community landing – it was helping lower and moderate income home buyers achieve their goal of home ownership. Despite your challenges, and there may be many, you still have the ability to control where you can end up financially. Believe in yourself. Work with paid organizations like Consolidated Credit.

House prices skyrocket, interest rates go up. Even if they’re high now, later on you can refinance when rates go back down. Everything is cyclical. When prices come down, great. If everybody could buy houses at their lowest prices. Why not? But the world doesn’t work that way. You buy when you can. You buy when something is available.

Consolidated Credit is a wonderful partner. They provide wonderful educational resources that we partner together and educate our community.

Consolidated Credit is a wonderful organization. They’ve been long-time partners of Comerica Bank. I believe that they really get down into the heart of the community to really help people to understand financial education and their finances in general.

Consolidated credit is a great institution. You really see the work that they’re doing; not only in the results that you see with individuals, but they show up.

Consolidated Credit is important because it teaches the basics. A lot of clients that we deal with are really low-income families who never had the opportunity to talk about credit and budgeting with a professional before. So they provide that gap for those families.

Hi, my name is Giovanna Gillioti, and I am the Community Outreach Manager at Consolidated Credit. It is important for me to be here today because I’m going to meet the entrepreneurial community here at Riviera Beach.

We have our entrepreneur incubator program and one of our graduates of this program is a very successful small business owner on our Broadway Corridor. We have several others that are in pre-development and we’re happy that we’ll be able to facilitate two of the graduates of this program in our Live Work Lofts Program that is under construction as we speak.

I’m Monique Corker, and I’m the External Affairs Market Manager with Comerica Bank. Part of Comerica’s philanthropic investments are making sure that we see communities involved in economic development, and we do that through collaborative partnerships with our business sense programs that take small businesses with gross annual revenues of one million or less and help them scope and scale so that they can start to create generational wealth amongst their business communities.

Thank you very much for having me here today. My name is Maria Gaitan, and as you know, we have been together on this journey for the last five or six weeks.

Sticking with the organizations, understanding your resources. So when you understand the resources like the Riviera CRA and the CRA that the banks use to give back to the community and other organizations that are also small businesses, you see why these types of resources are so important. You need to be with a bank that understands you; that understands your needs, and understands your business. Better yet, the manager knows you.

I am Laura Guillaume, and I am the founder of Think It Thru. I encourage them to do their business plan; to go through all the different sections that are really important for them; to address the entirety of their business before they ever launch their business. It’s really important to think it all the way through.

My name is Brenda Charles, and I’m the Financial Literacy Educator with Be Wise Consulting, also known as Be Wise With Your Money. We are a faith-based organization based in the Fort Lauderdale area. We educate, equip, and empower individuals with the tools to make good decisions with their money.

Hi! My name is Lawresha Permenter. I am the owner and baker of Cute and Crafty LLC. My goal when I started this business was to let vegans know that just because they changed their diet, doesn’t mean they had to take the joy out of enjoying sweet treats.

Hi everybody, my name is Wendy Marcellus. I am the owner of Wendy’s Back Porch. We specialize in excellent pre-owned or new clothes. Our mission is to clothe the homeless in our community.

The Business $ense Boot Camp has really helped me in a lot of ways. First, it’s helped me to be more prepared business-wise. It has helped me to prepare others business-wise, and it has given me that boost that I need and the confidence to have a successful business.

Rodney and Hot 105 FM, Rodney can you tell me why you’re here today at the Homebuying Fair?

We’re trying to get people into homes because this is an opportunity for you to come and talk to the title company, lender, mortgage company, HUD certified counselors, and banking institutions all in one place.

What do you know about Consolidated Credit?

Consolidated Credit is everywhere. They’ve been a longtime client on Hot 105 and Cox Media. You assist a lot of people, and if you weren’t good you wouldn’t be on our air waves.

That’s right

Thank you Rod.

All right.

Well right now in South Florida, affordable homeownership is one of the biggest challenges. We are trying as best as we can to run the financing side and help these families get to that dream of homeownership, and also partner with other agencies out there that are trying to help tackle the problem of affordable homeownership as well

Because we partnered with Consolidated Credit, we came out here so we can market our loan that’s tailored for low to moderate income buyers that are looking to become homeowners.

I think the biggest challenge is really a lack of information; not knowing exactly where to go for getting good resources to help them move forward to that next step.

I think one of the biggest challenges is the down payment. We’ve definitely heard that’s been a concern. I think also that some folks don’t completely understand the full end-to-end mortgage process, so I think it’s a little scary for some homebuyers.

The goal is to basically to educate first-time homebuyers; we want to ensure that you are going into this venture as knowledgeable as possible. To come to a program like this, you’re going to get as much information about the process.

TD Bank’s goal is really to help close the affordability gap. We want to help more folks achieve the dream of homeownership. Do your research. Educate yourself. There are so many resources out there that will really help you understand what’s involved in the mortgage process. So, that’s the one thing I would have to say: definitely do your own research.

Our goal is to support the community. The Alvin Sherman Library is a joint-use library. It’s jointly supported by the Broward County Commissioners and Southeastern University. It’s really getting information, that’s what the library is all about.

We’re here to give out information about homestead exemptions, or any other exemptions to
help taxpayers help lower the property taxes. For Florida residents, it helped cap them at three percent, and it overall helps them save money.

APEX’s goal for being here is basically to let everybody know the importance of getting a home inspection at the beginning of your whole home buying process. But, a lot of the time, you should really know what’s wrong with the home that you’re about to buy and you’re about to move into before you buy a home. You think this price, but then you end up putting in another two hundred thousand dollars into the home

TD has been working with Consolidated Credit I believe for the last three or four years, and so we connect and do the financial education sessions. And then I also know that you guys reciprocate by helping us connect with more community influences.

Consolidated Credit has been around for years. I’ve been working with them for many years in their home buying education classes and really sharing a lot of good information as it relates to that one aspect of that homeownership process. And that is credit. Credit is really important; not only as a lender and loan officer do we share information about finances, but we really talk a lot about credit because credit is really a driving factor to determine whether or not these clients are going to be actually qualified.