Newsmakers
Practitioner Goes Extra Mile for Disabled Buyer
Todd Comer of Coldwell Banker United, REALTORS®, spent 13 months overcoming obstacles to help a disabled man buy a home, then rolled up his sleeves to help remodel it to make it livable.
BY HALEY M. HWANG
Less than a month after getting his license, Todd Comer walked into his neighborhood Wal-Mart store in Charlotte, N.C., proudly wearing his real estate nametag. He and his daughter Meredith, then 8, walked up to a greeter, who was handing out smiley face stickers to kids.
“You have your nametag on,” the greeter said to Comer.
“Yes,” Comer responded with enthusiasm. “I’m hoping someone will stop me and want to talk to me about real estate.”
“I want to talk about real estate, but no one wants to talk to me about real estate,” came the reply from the wheelchair-bound Steve West, who has been working as a greeter for Wal-Mart for 12 years. West—a 40-year-old man who was born with cerebral palsy, abandoned at birth, and raised by state institutions and group homes—told Comer that he has always dreamed about owning his own home. But three other real estate practitioners he approached had refused to help him.
“How do you say no to that?” asks Comer, 41, a sales associate with the Coldwell Banker United, REALTORS®, Southpark Office in Charlotte. A religious man, Comer said the Christian in him told him to help this man, so he gave West his business card and set up an appointment to meet with him.
Comer’s subsequent experiences—which spanned 13 months of dogged persistence—taught him much about the difficulties people with disabilities and a fixed income face in trying to purchase homes. Now, having helped West achieve his lifelong dream, Comer feels he has found his calling in real estate. He wants to use what he has learned about the programs available for these first-time buyers to help other disabled people become homeowners.
The Challenges
After the Wal-Mart meeting, Comer met with West at his government-subsidized apartment and took his credit application. Comer was shocked to learn that West received only $253 each month from Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and made $8 per hour working 25 hours a week as a greeter at Wal-Mart. Comer started contacting mortgage companies to see if West could be approved for a loan. Comer researched first-time homebuyer assistance programs, only to be shuffled around from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Fannie Mae to the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency, a public agency that helps to finance affordable housing in the state, and other local government programs.
Time after time, the loan officers told Comer that they couldn’t do anything for West or said they didn’t have the time to handle a special case like his.
“There were points through this when I was ready to give up, but Steve kept me going,” Comer says. “And I felt that I couldn’t let him down.”
Then Comer found a like-minded soft-heart in Charlene Davis, a loan officer at Wachovia Mortgage Corp. in Charlotte. Davis joined in Comer’s crusade and helped him investigate programs that would approve West for a home loan.
“She could have swept this under the rug, too,” Comer says of Davis. “She could have said she was too busy, but she didn’t. She really went beyond the call of duty to make this happen.”
Davis told Comer about a program called the Wachovia Partnership Loan, a product for low- and moderate-income buyers that offered a 100 percent loan-to-value ratio. That meant that although West had diligently saved about $8,000 over the past 10 years to buy a home, he only had to bring $500 of his own money into the transaction.
“I deal with this type of loan quite a lot—low- to moderate-income borrowers who don’t fit the norm of 5 percent to 10 percent down and borrowers with credit issues,” says Davis, who now works for Countrywide Home Loans in Charlotte. “It’s my passion to help people who would not normally qualify for a loan.”
Four months after Comer started working with West, Davis was able to help secure a loan approval for $56,000—much less than West had hoped for. Comer and West began their home search in south Charlotte, but the homes in that area were much more than West could afford.
The Deal
After two months of searching for homes in West’s price range, Comer came upon a FSBO for the condo two doors down from where West lived.
West was living in a rented condo in east Charlotte that was subsidized by HUD. The condo for sale was asking $56,000, but Comer said he negotiated a sales price of $59,000 to include his commission. Comer wrote up the contract and sent it to Davis at Wachovia, only to have the contract rejected. The $135 monthly assessment exceeded the guidelines for the original loan approval.
The Obstacles
Comer was back to square one. He didn’t know what to do. But West kept insisting that it was possible.
Comer began to call around to other housing assistance agencies to see if there was any other way to get West approved for this loan. One promising source said the process would take a year. That wasn’t fast enough for West.
But beating all the bushes to find other alternatives took an additional two months. During that time, West paid the assessment and a small utility fee to the seller to have him hold the contract.
When Comer ran out of financing options, he called the Social Security Administration as a last resort to ask about West’s disability benefits.
“I said, ‘Are you sure that $253 is all he’s supposed to be getting?’ and I heard this gasp on the other end,” Comer says. “They said he should have been changed to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) a long time ago. After another three months of red tape, they bumped him to $535 per month.”
“It’s not enough to get rich on, but it was enough to swing the deal,” Comer says. West had to cut back his work hours from 25 to 20 hours a week to stay within the income caps for his additional disability benefits.
Through this 13-month process, Comer says that he realized what few options are available for people with disabilities who want to become homeowners.
“There are no programs out there for handicapped people,” Comer says. “There should be a 2 percent or 3 percent loan for handicapped people. If there is one out there, I couldn’t find it. It’s a shame.”
The Closing Was Just the Beginning
Comer says that closing on the condo was just the beginning of “the battle.” The condo had to be renovated to accommodate West’s wheelchair. All the doorways had to be widened and light switches lowered. Special appliances had to be installed. Comer spent an additional two months after closing to help to raise nearly $7,000 to help pay for the needed renovations, and he even brought volunteers from his church to paint the entire home.
During his work with West, Comer underwent hernia surgery and suffered a heart attack, but these health issues never stood in the way of helping West whenever he needed something for his new home.
“We talk two to three times a week,” Comer says. “He calls me all the time for a lot of stuff. I’ve got a friend for life now.”
Above and Beyond the Call of Duty
The seller was so impressed by Comer’s dedication to his client, he contacted the Charlotte Observer, and the newspaper wrote a feature article about West and Comer. After the article was published in January, West received additional donations from people moved by his story, and a Sunday school class has adopted him and is raising money to help him.
As a result of the West deal, Comer got another listing from a mother whose son is disabled. And he’s hoping to do more work with the disabled community. It’s not an easy path to success, but “for Todd, the reward is not monetary,” says Donna Hall, his broker.
Comer only had eight transaction sides in 2003 and has one pending so far this year. He works part time opening and sorting mail for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Charlotte for a small steady income.
“When you’re a Christian, every job that you do is your mission,” Comer says. “I’m helping people do something very important. I have the resources to help make people’s dreams come true.”
Editor's Note: Newsmakers is a monthly feature that profiles real estate professionals who have remarkable and inspiring personal stories, have found creative ways to tackle business challenges, or are making a difference in the industry or their communities. If you know someone who should be considered for this feature, write to Haley Hwang, Web Editor, at hhwang@realtors.org
