Tanese Orr and her husband, Robert Lashley, had lived in New York City’s public housing for over 20 years when Orr entered the city’s housing lottery.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“I applied for the homeownership aspect because I was already renting and didn’t want to leave an apartment for another apartment,” Orr tells CNBC Make It.
Since 2015, the Small Homes Rehab-NYCHA Program has facilitated the purchase, rehabilitation and sale of FHA-foreclosed homes under NYCHA’s ownership to first-time homeowners.
61 homes have been renovated and sold to low- and moderate-income families since 2015.
In November 2022, three years after signing up, Orr logged into her Housing Connect profile and saw an active lottery for houses that the city was restoring.
When Orr and Lashley first saw the home, it was undergoing extensive renovations.
Neighborhood Restore HDFC
Less than two months later, Orr received an email request to submit a list of required documents, including pay stubs and bank account information for everyone in the household. They had just two weeks.
After submitting the application, the couple viewed two homes: a three-family house and a two-family house, both in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.
The average Clinton Hill, NY home value is $971,984, up 2.2% over the past year, according to Zillow.
For both of these properties, a priority was ensuring they remained affordable and accessible to former NYCHA residents.
The two-family house had been gut-renovated and was made up of two units.
Neighborhood Restore HDFC
Orr was very familiar with Clinton Hill. In the early 2000s, she worked at a Blockbuster in the area and remembers telling people back then that she would live nearby someday.
“When I first got the job I remember looking around and saying ‘I really love this neighborhood and I want to live here,'” Orr says. “At that time I had no perspective of owning anything. I was a high school dropout, a teen mom living in the projects and working at Blockbuster, making minimum wage at the time. I didn’t know how I was going to do that but I just knew it was going to happen for me. It’s surreal that I live here now.”
Orr was most interested in the three-family house at first, but the couple were outbid.
The two-family house had been gut-renovated and was made up of two units. On the second floor was a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, and on the first floor was a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom apartment. The house also had a backyard and a finished basement.
For the family, it was a pretty good second option. “We loved that it had a backyard,” Orr says.
Renovations took a little under a year, Orr says.
Neighborhood Restore HDFC
Orr and her husband took out a $691,000 mortgage with a down payment of $36,369 and $23,395 closing costs. The house itself was valued at $1.1 million and the Department of Housing Preservation covered the rest of the purchase price in the form of a second mortgage. They also received a down payment assistance loan in the amount of $15,000.
The couple secured a 30-year State of New York Mortgage Agency low-interest rate mortgage, with a 6.6% interest rate. The monthly mortgage was $4,968.36 when they closed, but has since increased to $5,275.53 a month, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
“People think that we just won the lottery and we got it for free but that’s not true,” Orr says. “We still had to have a good amount saved.”
Though closing on the property took over six months, Orr says she was committed to buying the two-family house at all costs.
“While I was going through the process, they [HPD] kept asking for more documents but I didn’t care. I was going to find a way to get everything to them because I knew it would be my home,” she says.
The couple lives in the three-bedroom apartment on the first floor. One condition of buying the house required them to rent out the one-bedroom apartment upstairs.
Photos by Molly Stromoski for NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development
Orr closed on the house in October and moved in November 2023. One condition of buying the house through the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development required the couple to rent out the one-bedroom apartment upstairs. They found a tenant who moved in October 2024 and pays $2,584 a month in rent.
The family has lived in the house for just over a year now, and says the biggest adjustment has been getting used to all the expenses that come with owning instead of renting, like paying for water, remembering to take out the garbage, and overall upkeep.
“We’re coming from paying $1,800 a month to now paying $5,000 a month for a mortgage. It was an adjustment,” she says.
Despite that, Orr says it’s worth it now that she and her husband are homeowners.
“The best part is saying that it’s ours and saying we did this and we were responsible enough to save and work hard for this and it’s ours,” she says. “It’s a peace of mind.”
The family has lived in the house for just over a year now, and says the biggest adjustment has been getting used to all the expenses that come with owning.
Photos by Molly Stromoski for NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development
Because of that sense of pride, Orr says she doesn’t see herself ever selling the house but does want to own another property down the line.
“I love Brooklyn, I love the neighborhood and I love that house,” she says.
Orr’s biggest piece of advice, having gone through this process with the NYC housing lottery, is to remember how vital your credit score is. “Even if you have the money, if your credit is not right, you’re going to miss out on a great opportunity.”
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