South Dakota Housing finding success with Grants for Grads

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – With the current state of the economy, it can be easy for any recent college graduate to assume that buying a home is just not in the cards.

But with the Grants for Grads program, hundreds have already found out that homeownership is a possibility for them and it has been keeping young professionals in the state.

Previous Coverage: New state program to give recent grads grants for home ownership

South Dakota Housing Executive Director Chas Olson said that since early May, 365 recent graduates have realized their dreams of owning a home with grant funds that provide five percent of the loan amount and total around $4.5 million collectively.

“As you can probably imagine, we had a really big surge of applications in the early months and it’s really been steady ever since, so I think when you consider the context of today’s housing costs, high interest rates, the five percent is really proving to be a pretty significant aid to first-time home-buyers,” Olson explained.

Each grant is worth up to $18,000 and has been used for closing costs, paying off extra fees or pre-paying mortgage insurance premiums on FHA loans. It can also be used in tandem with seller concessions. However it gets used, it greatly reduces the financial burden for the homebuyer.

Mortgage lender Devin Malmgren enjoys being part of walking first-time homebuyers through the process of buying a home.

For some, the Grants for Grads program has made a purchase possible in the first place.

“It’s unbelievable because last week I gave away $27,000. The week prior, I gave away around $86,000. [It’s] giving these first-time home-buyers that type of money and setting them up for the future,” Malmgren said.

While it can be difficult to project how much longer the opportunity for grant money will be around, their target goal is to give out between 900 and 1,000 grants.

“We’re committed to hitting that 900 to 1000. It’s just going to depend on interest rate environments and the talk of the possible cuts from the feds. That could produce another surge,” Olson said.

Malmgren said he believes it might run out by the end of the year or in early 2025.

“We saw a significant rate drop over the last two weeks and with rates dropping, that demand is ticking up and so I’d anticipate that current pull-through rate of the grant program to increase and then deplete those funds even faster,” Malmgren explained. “It is limited time and it’s first come, first serve.”

Malmgren said that buying now still might not be the perfect opportunity for everyone.

He said it might be in the best interest of any recent college graduate interested in buying a home to talk things through with a mortgage lender or realtor to see what assistance they qualify for, what the mortgage payments might look like, and if it’s the right time to buy.

“As this program winds down, I know it’s a big concern and we get a lot of calls about when it’s going to go away, they don’t know if they want to lock in, interest rates may be coming down, that sort of thing. We’re going to do our best to communicate that to our lenders and to the public when the sun’s setting so to speak on the program. Hopefully, we have a couple of month’s notice so folks can plan accordingly,” Olson said.

So far, the program has lived up to everything they expected and is meeting its main goal.

“Keeping college graduates in the state helps bring new skills, fresh perspectives that contribute to our local workforce,” Olson said.

Experts say to keep an eye on interest rates as well as the number of homes on the market because that can dictate the demand. Higher demand might mean that the grant money could dry up sooner than later.

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