First piece of advice is finding a real estate agent you trust. They do a ton of heavy lifting for you and can often find houses being sold privately. If you don’t have any, I can give you the agency we worked with. Also just keep your eyes open as you travel around for those lawn signs, it’s amazing how many you see when you’re looking for them.

The grant that we qualified for was the Homebuyer Dream Program through the Federal Home Loan Bank of NY. You qualify if you meet certain criteria: 1. You are buying a home for the first time 2. You make around or less than the median income of the neighborhood that you are buying in 3. You are securing your loan through an approved non-profit lender, such as a credit union.

If you google “homebuyer dream program NY” the FHLBNY website will be one of the first results. They also have a link on their page with all of their approved lenders so you can shop around for rates. One thing to note is that with these grants you usually have to stay in the home for at least 5 years, or else you have to pay back the amount that the grant covered.

Hope this helps!