Open house for neighborhood revival
Published 10:27 pm Thursday, February 11, 2016
- Diane Watson, vice president of Community Ventures, displays a photo of a house the company built in Camilla for a low-income family. A non-profit home construction business, Community Ventures has teamed up with the City of Moultrie to build houses in Northwest Moultrie.
MOULTRIE — Community Ventures welcomed the public Thursday to an open house on the first residence completed in what is hoped to be a neighborhood revival in northwest Moultrie. Community Ventures is a non-profit home-building company based in Camilla. Diane Watson, vice president of Community Ventures, said the open house at 201 First St. N.W. drew strong interest.
The project dates back to September 2013, when the City of Moultrie received a grant for more than $449,000 to demolish dilapidated housing in the area bounded by First Street, Second Avenue, Third Street and Seventh Avenue Northwest.
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The city would use the grant to acquire the land and demolish the vacant houses, then give the land to Community Ventures, by way of the Colquitt County Land Bank. Community Ventures would then build a house on the lot and sell it to a low-income family.
In June 2014, Colquitt Regional Medical Center donated land at the corner of First Street and Second Avenue Northwest for the first home to be built on.
The donated land wasn’t exactly vacant: It had a foundation on it. And when Community Ventures surveyed the lot, Watson said, they found the foundation lay not only on the former Colquitt Regional lot, but partly on the lot next to it, which was owned by someone else.
Over time, the land bank was able to acquire that adjacent lot and gift it to Community Ventures too. Until that happened, the company couldn’t remove any part of the foundation, Watson said.
With the old foundation removed, Community Ventures poured a new one entirely on the former Colquitt Regional lot and built a 1,500-square-foot house on it.
The house — a three-bedroom, two-bath on a narrow quarter-acre lot — is valued at $120,000, Watson said, but Community Ventures is positioned to help a buyer with loan programs through the U.S. Department of Agriculture that will have low interest and other benefits. In addition, the city’s grant will pay the down payment, up to $15,000, if the buyer qualifies.
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So, a buyer might have to pay no down payment and finance only $105,000 on a $120,000 house. Plus, the USDA offers monthly subsidies for low-income borrowers who qualify.
Because the grant, the loan and the subsidies all have different qualifications, a potential borrower should contact Watson for more information about their own circumstances.
The entire development is expected to include 10 to 15 houses, Watson said, but Community Ventures has to sell this one first. Because the company is funding each house from its own pocket, it can’t get too far ahead of the market.
“We’ll sell this one, build another one, sell it and build another,” she said.
But there’s a time limit on the grant, so the faster the houses sell, the more Community Ventures can build. Legal issues — “red tape” — delayed the start of this house more than a year, but the actual construction took about 11 weeks.
Community Ventures already has access to two more lots in the same block, so as soon as this house sells it will be ready to start building another.
For more information, contact Watson at (229) 336-0020.