The Davis County Community & Economic Development Department recently announced a homeownership assistance program scheduled to roll out later this month.

According to a news release, $1.8 million in federal funding will be utilized to assist low- to moderate-income families fulfill the dream of purchasing a home.

The program will begin accepting applications Oct. 16.

“Income-qualified individuals and families interested in buying a home in Davis County can apply for a homeownership assistance loan of up to $50,000,” the release said. “These loans can be used for any combination of principal reduction, permanent interest rate buy down (up to $10,000), and/or up to 50% of the required down payment and closing costs. The loans will require no payments and will be repaid to the County (with an additional 1% interest) when the home is sold or refinanced for an ineligible reason. This program can be coupled with other State and Local homeownership assistance programs.”

New funds will be released quarterly through 2024.

Chanel Flores, Davis County economic development director, told the Standard-Examiner that the county wanted to step up on earlier efforts to encourage homeownership.

“We’ve done down payment assistance, but they were anywhere from $5,000-$10,000 at max,” she said. “Over the last few years, we’ve noticed that program wasn’t being utilized as much as it could’ve been. And we realized, with the cost of homes going up as much as it did as well as inflation and interest rates over the last year, that something else needed to be done.”

The loan program will utilize $1.8 million of the American Rescue Plan Act funds allocated to the county.

Flores said there is a similar program at the state level with a few key differences.

“The state has their $20,000 down payment assistance program that they actually launched from this last legislative session,” she said. “We actually are allowing our residents to ‘stack’ the programs so they could stack it with the state program. The thing that’s a little bit different is with the state’s program, you do have to be a first-time homebuyer — with the Davis County program, you don’t have to be a first-time homebuyer. Then our threshold on the total dollar amounts are a little bit different. With the state, it has to be a new build or new construction under $450,000, while in Davis County it’s going to be (under) $500,000 and it doesn’t have to be new construction.”

Similar programs exist in other municipalities.

The City of Ogden has its Own in Ogden program, which provides no-interest loans of up to $10,000 or $15,000, depending on a homebuyer’s particular circumstances.

Realtor Stephanie Taylor of Ogden, who helps sell homes both in Weber and Davis counties, lauded the initiative but said she’s never seen as expansive a program at the county level as planned in Davis County.

“I think it’s going to be phenomenal because this allows people to couple this with other housing assistance programs,” she said.

Median home prices in Davis County are higher than in Weber County and among the highest in Utah, but Taylor said it can be tough to buy a home anywhere in the state due to higher interest rates and inflation.

“I think it’s hard all over for a low- to median-income household,” she said.

Flores said home values in Davis County average around $510,000 at the moment.

“I think for a lot of residents in Davis County, this is going to be targeted probably more to looking at townhomes,” she said. “There are some single-family homes we’ve seen on the market that are smaller in size that would be able to fit in that under $500,000 (criteria), and then condos.”

Flores said once the initial $1.8 million is depleted, the county will still look at ways to keep the program moving.

“We do have additional federal funding (like) community development block grants where we’ve decided we could allocate up to $200,000 to this program, if it is successful,” she said. “The county is going to be looking at becoming a home consortium, which is another program under HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) which would give us additional funds to either continue or extend this program or other affordable housing initiatives.”

Flores said Davis County officials are excited to launch the program as cities in the county continue to grow.

“Homeownership is one of the key ways to generational wealth,” she said. “With Davis County, we have the third-largest population and we’re the smallest county in land mass. We don’t have a ton of land mass, so being able to get families into homes in Davis County, we think, is going to be really an amazing opportunity to help the low-moderate income levels as well as being able to assist our businesses.”

For more information on the program, including qualifications and how to apply, visit https://bit.ly/48PZOez.

Standard-Examiner reporter Tim Vandenack contributed to this story.