After eight years of living in Madison, a couple can now celebrate owning their first home.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, Ald. Sean O’Brien, local developer Kaba Bah and representatives from the Madison Area Community Land Trust joined married couple Ariel Christian and Chet Wells to celebrate the completion of two new twin homes in the Owl Creek neighborhood.
“We absolutely love the area, although we never thought we’d be able to actually buy a home, because we have the privilege of working jobs that we love — we are rich in other ways,” Christian said in a statement. “Because of those jobs, we were okay not buying a house and building equity, we were okay renting, but after learning about MACLT and the generous down payment assistance through the City, we could actually buy a house and build equity, it’s incredible.”
Madison’s owner-occupied housing market shows a vacancy rate of 0.6%, creating a market of low supply and high demand — and high prices.
The Madison and MACLT partnership helps with some of the barriers to owning a home. The city contributed $600,000 from the Affordable Housing Fund for this project, awarded through a Request for Proposals process.
The city also contributed the land for the project, selling the lot in the Owl Creek neighborhood to MACLT for $1.
A total of four new homes were created with the pair of zero-lot line twin homes in a space that otherwise would have contained only one homeownership opportunity.
The homes created in this project are priced at about $240,000 and are approximately 1,200 square feet each with a one-car attached garage.
In order to be eligible, buyers must make no more than 80% of the Area Median Income. For a household of two people, that is an annual household income of up to $83,120.
