Government Grants - Can You Buy a Home With One?

Government grants don’t work like the late-night TV ads say

If you’ve seen much late night television, you’ve undoubtedly seen the ads that offer to sell you, for a price, information about how you can buy cars and houses at a steep discount from the Federal Government. You’ll also see ads that talk about how the Government is “giving away” billions of dollars in cash, and that you can use it for whatever you like - including the purchase of a home. One ad even suggests that you shouldn’t need a home loan because the Government will simply give it to you through freely and easily available grant money. This can’t be true, can it?

Unless you just fell off of the turnip truck, you should be aware that some things are just too good to be true. Sorry, but the Government is not going to just give you money so that you can buy the house next door to Brad Pitt. The Government does have a grant program, and yes, some of the billions of available dollars are earmarked for housing. In fact, if you own a construction company and you are willing to build an apartment building in a run-down part of town for the express purpose of establishing housing for the underprivileged, you’ll have no trouble receiving assistance from Washington. You will not get much help if all you want to do is build a luxury home on a golf course in Park City, Utah. You may get help if you wish to purchase an old home in a bad neighborhood and refurbish it. Free money to live like Paris Hilton isn’t in the cards, however. From that perspective, the offer of free money to buy a home makes this just another home loan scam.

Grant money is available, but it’s only available under limited circumstances and only to certain groups or organizations. Washington makes a lot of money available to the department of Housing and Urban Development, but that money isn’t handed out to individuals. It’s given out to corporations who want to help individuals obtain affordable housing. And while certain limited amounts of funds can be had by individuals, the process is far more complicated than just filling out a form. One of the better-known manuals for obtaining grant money provides detailed instructions, and they run hundreds of pages. There are piles of forms to fill out, lots of requirements to meet and lots of competition for the little bit of money that’s out there. And once you receive a grant, you have to report how you’re spending it, and whether or not you are spending it as promised. Obtaining grant money is hard work, and there are many people who have careers doing nothing but writing grant applications for people.

In short, there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you think that buying a book from late night television will enable you to obtain a home for free, you are mistaken. That doesn’t mean that you can’t qualify for some grant money. To find out what’s available, you should check out the Government grant Website at www.grants.gov. This site can tell you what’s available, who qualifies and what you must do to get the money. That’s a far better option than buying a book from some guy on the Late Show, isn’t it?